ISRAEL: Two israeli identical twin brothers, the Bronsteins, come up with answer to facial recognition problems

Record ID: 397884

  • Title: ISRAEL: Two israeli identical twin brothers, the Bronsteins, come up with answer to facial recognition problems
  • Date: 12th February 2003
  • Summary: (L!1) HAIFA, ISRAEL (FEBRUARY 12, 2003) (REUTERS) ALEX BRONSTEIN HAVING HIS FACE SCANNED FOR THE FACE RECOGNITION SYSTEM MICHAEL BRONSTEIN PROJECTING LASER RAY ON HIS BROTHER ALEX ALEX AND MICHAEL CHANGE PLACES ALEX BRONSTEIN PROJECTING LASER RAYS ON MICHAEL ALEX AND MICHAEL BRONSTEIN LOOKING AT THEIR 3-DIMENSION PICTURES ON THE COMPUTER CLOSE UP OF THREE DIMENSION F
  • Embargoed: 27th February 2003 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: HAIFA ISRAEL
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: Technology,Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
  • Reuters ID: LVA3TU18DQVID43DHM1U0OZEAD62
  • Story Text: Two Israeli brothers have come up with an answer to facial recognition problems that have plagued the security industry since September 11. Their project began, however, as a personal joke. They wanted to create a system that could tell them apart as the Bronstein brothers are identical twins.
    It could be a scene from a science fiction movie. Thin laser beams screen the pale face of a man whose head is stuck in an oval wooden hole, his eyes blinking at a furious rate.
    But Tom Cruise is unlikely to show up in the next scene to rescue the human "guinea pig".
    This futuristic scene is being played out in a simple lab at the Technion, Israel's institute of technology.
    And both scientist and "guinea pig" are brothers: Alex and Michael Bronstein. More than brothers, they are identical twins. And their project, begun partly as a joke, is to create a machine to tell them apart.
    Recently Alex and Michael, electrical engineering students at the Technion, filed an international patent in the United States. The patent is for a three-dimensional face recognition system.
    The project began partly as an exercise with their professor, Ron Kimmel, partly as a joke, according to the twins.
    "Initially, probably as a joke, he (Kimmel) wished to check whether this approach could distinguish between us, between identical twins", says Michael Bronstein. "And as a miracle we saw that indeed it can distinguish between us,"
    added Michael, the younger of the twins.
    It was Professor Ron Kimmel , the brothers' teacher, who challenged the 22-year-old twins, who immigrated from Russia in the early 1990's, to come up with a model so accurate it could tell them apart.
    In response, the brothers developed a technology for mapping three-dimensional images with a sensor that records the topography of a person's face.
    This is done by scanning the face with a series of light patterns.
    Next, the information is stored as a three-dimensional image onto a computer, using a programmed designed by the twins and Professor Kimmel.
    Employing mathematical algorithms similar to those used in conducting searches across the Internet, the technology then measures the curved distances between a number of sample points on the facial surface.
    "What happens is that this kind of mapping makes it all "invariant" - or, it is not influenced by our expressions"
    said Kimmel, pointing at state-of-the-art graphics to demonstrate his theory, which allows recognition of features even if the person's expression changes.
    "If we smile a little bit or if we change a little bit our face it will still be mapped into the same signature, the same kind of surface," he added.
    The distances between the points are reconfigured as straight lines in a three-dimensional space, creating a new, abstracted image, or signature, of a human face built on precise mathematical calculations.
    Kimmel and the Bronstein brothers say this signature is unique to every individual, even if you are a twin.
    The facial signature would remain in effect more or less for the same number of years as a passport photo would continue to represent a person accurately.
    Ageing, cosmetic surgery, significant changes to the facial surface such as growing or removing a beard could all disrupt the matching process.
    But the system is a huge advance on current recognition systems and in the post -September 11th world, the implications of the system are huge.
    "Tests that followed the tragedy of September the 11th revealed weaknesses of two dimensional recognition, that it can be easily faked. And we believe that our project -- at least preliminarily tests shows -- that it is much more robust to fooling and we believe that it can replace traditional two-dimensional face recognition projects", said Michael Bronstein.
    The twins are still in the process of developing the commercial model of their system. Security companies have already shown interest in the system, but for the time being, the twins plan to complete their masters degree and continue studying.
    For all the science fiction, advanced mathematics and futuristic physics, the brothers, who spend most of their time together, sound casual about the whole thing.
    "I am not sure that we are some kind of that special that, like you say. Just two normal twenty, almost twenty three year old persons, that's all," says Alex Bronstein, smiling. Quite the average Joe.
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