Hidden Faces Can Be Found By Zooming Into Hi-Res Photos of Eyes

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Talk about a scene right out of Blade Runner: By zooming in on high-resolution photographs of faces, researchers recovered images of unseen bystanders from reflections in the subjects' eyes. The technique could eventually be used in criminal investigations.

The dark and shiny areas of our cornea are like a black mirror reflecting the surrounding environment off of it. Given the power of high-resolution photography these days, it's conceivable that these reflections could contain decipherable information — the kind that could help investigators in crimes in which victims are photographed, like hostage taking or child sex abuse. Indeed, previous research has shown that faces can be identified from even the poorest quality images.

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To see if recognizable images could be extracted from extreme zoom-ins, psychologist Rob Jenkins and Christie Kerr from York University asked volunteers to participate in a face-matching task.

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They were presented with highly pixelated — but still identifiable — images drawn from the cornea of images taken by a 38 megapixel camera. On average, the whole-face area for the reflected bystanders was about 322 pixels. Incredibly, these images were reconstructed from a sliver of digital information about 30,000 times smaller than the subjects' face.

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Observers who were unfamiliar with the bystanders' faces achieved 71% recognition accuracy, while those who were familiar were recorded at 84% accuracy. And in a test of spontaneous recognition, they could accurately name a familiar face from an eye reflection image.

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Interestingly, the researchers insist that the photos don't need to be taken at such a high megapixel rate. What's more important, they say, is to find people familiar with the faces in question.

For those of you concerned about privacy, this should give you some food for thought the next time you upload your images to Instagram or Facebook.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0083325

That, my friends, is very freaking cool
 
So the urban myth that the last thing that a person sees when they die is recorded in the eyes is sorta true? Neat.
 
So this is real then?

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Okay not really. You can't get anything from a grainy security camera video (which seems kind of useless if it's purpose is to identify criminals) but in the face (:oldrazz:) of all the times you see them zoom in repeatedly to find some detail it might work in high res photos.
 
All of the hidden faces are actually me doing stuff in another dimension. Like The Twilight Zone.

:o
 
Now the CSI writers will be doing it far more often because now they can say "We were right the whole time!"
 
Another reason to close somebody's eyes when they die. Crazy stuff.
 
Where did all this death thing come from? It's just a picture of the eye....
 
So the urban myth that the last thing that a person sees when they die is recorded in the eyes is sorta true? Neat.

If you mean if someones in the room talking pictures of peoples eyes, a crime happens and the crime is captured in the reflection of someones eye... Yea, just like that. :oldrazz:
 
The eye is a reflective surface. Not really shocking that you can see what they are looking at with super high resolution...especially when you can clearly see the light source in photoshoots.
 
I knew this just by plain common sense. Hardly news... bah humbug!
 
I'm gonna try this the next time I take a picture of someone... Should be interesting.
 
I don't get the close-up gif. If the eye is supposed to be a mirror reflecting things....where's the camera and the photographer? :huh:

If you look at high-res professional photoshoots, there's often a ring of light reflected in the model's eye. That's from the ring flash around the camera lens, so obviously the camera SHOULD get reflected if the subject is looking at it.



Anyway, it's probably just a poorly recreated image done in Photoshop, since the eye-picture doesn't resemble the schematic they describe in the paper, at all. :funny: This is what happens when a scientist gets her mitts on a weird figure. :oldrazz:
 
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