A large-scale software-generated face composite sketch database

Abstract

Numerous algorithms that can identify suspects depicted in sketches following eyewitness descriptions of criminals are currently being developed because of their potential importance in forensics investigations. Yet, despite the prevalent use of software-generated composite sketches by law enforcement agencies, there still exist few such sketches which can be used by researchers to adequately evaluate face photo- sketch recognition algorithms when using these composites. The main contribution of this paper is the creation of the University of Malta Software- Generated Face Sketch (UoM-SGFS) database that is publicly available and which contains the largest number of viewed software-generated sketches, that also exhibit several deformations and exaggerations to mimic sketches obtained in real- world investigations. Further, in contrast to other databases, all sketches in this new database are represented in colour. Lastly, state-of-the- art recognition algorithms are found to perform worse on the software-generated composites than on hand-drawn sketches, while recognition accuracies still lag far behind those achieved for traditional photo-to-photo comparisons.