NEC's NeoFace® Facial Recognition Technology Ranks First in NIST Testing for Third Consecutive Time NEC Achieves Top Accuracy Score and ‘Best-in-Class’ Performance in NIST’s Face Recognition Vendor Test

*** For immediate use 10 July 2014

Hong Kong – July 10, 2014 – NEC Corporation (NEC) announced that NeoFace (*), NEC’s facial recognition technology, achieved the highest performance evaluation in the Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) 2013 performed by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).  Results were released in NIST’s Interagency Report (**) - NISTIR 8009 - Performance of Face Recognition Algorithms. The NIST report is widely viewed as the benchmark of determining which facial recognition software solution is the most accurate for “one to many” searching under a variety of situations.

NEC’s technology took first place for the third consecutive time following the 2009 Multiple Biometric Grand Challenge (MBGC 2009) and 2010 Multiple Biometrics Evaluation (MBE 2010). The most recent FRVT test for one to many searching (Class C) evaluated the accuracy of database enrollments and personal identity searches using massive volumes of facial image data (over 1.6 million people), including multiple “standard quality” criminal mug-shots, “low quality” webcam snap shots, and “high quality” passport/visa photo images.

Twelve vendors and four academic institutions participated in the FRVT evaluation, which consisted of several test scenarios designed to determine accuracy based on measured error rates. Not only did NEC’s search accuracy exceed competitors by a wide margin, it also improved significantly from the past MBE 2010 testing, with rank one miss rates reduced by about 28% (from 8.9% to 6.4%). No other vendor experienced as great an improvement (***). The 2014 NIST report cites: “As in the 2010 test, the algorithms from NEC Corporation give broadly the lowest error rates.”   

Also, NEC’s facial recognition algorithms were faster than all participating vendors. The company’s algorithm data retrieval processing speed can make approximately 3.02 million comparisons per second from a database of 160,000 facial images. This is approximately 1.8 times faster than the closest competitor when carried out on a single core. 

NEC’s algorithms also showed limited degradation in accuracy with poor quality webcam images – simulating real-world scenarios of poor quality images captured from surveillance cameras.  In fact, tests with a 1.6 million record database showed that NEC’s algorithm was more accurate with poor quality images than most other vendors with high quality images, making it particularly useful for real-time surveillance and forensic analysis using poor quality recorded videos.

Moreover, according to NEC’s own evaluation tests, it has significantly improved its “one to one” matching capabilities, where two facial images are evaluated to determine if they are the same person, reducing the authentication error rate by two-thirds when compared to its technologies that took first in the MBE2010.

“The NIST benchmark test provides objective and accurate evaluations through ‘blind testing’ of authentication technologies belonging to a wide range of companies. These tests are supported by leading organizations that include the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI, helping to attract attention from around the world as a highly reliable assessment,” said Shigeki Yamagata, general manager, Information and Media Processing Laboratories, NEC Corporation.

“NEC’s face recognition technology has been adopted by organizations in more than 20 countries throughout the world, including police forces, immigration offices and amusement facilities. This No.1 ranking is the result of more than 25 years of NEC Laboratories’ independent development and improvement of algorithms.”

“These results are extraordinary! When compared to the prior NIST MBGC 2009 and MBE 2010 testing in which NEC also registered  the  top ranking and superior performance, these improvements demonstrate that NEC is not only outperforming our competitors, but also advancing our own solution,” said Raffie Beroukhim, vice president, Biometrics Division, NEC Corporation of America. “NEC’s NeoFace facial recognition matching algorithm improved the most in one to many search accuracy as compared to the other industry participants.”

The NEC facial recognition solution is gaining wider acceptance in several new industries beyond its traditional use in law enforcement.  Retail, hospitality and other businesses are realizing potential financial benefits and improved customer satisfaction by enhancing the customer experience.

Since the 1970s NEC has invested significant resources in the research and development of its biometric identification technologies, and has consistently achieved world-leading results in independent, third-party testing. These latest test results re-confirm NEC's superior matching capabilities within the world of face recognition.

“NEC NeoFace technology’s strength lies in its tolerance of poor quality, highly compressed surveillance videos and images, previously considered of little to no value, leading to a higher rate of positive identification,” said Beroukhim. “While searching of latent (scene of crime) fingerprints is the norm and NEC NeoFace facial recognition technology positively identifies latent photos with high degree of accuracy, it is in real life investigations where the accuracy of NEC distances itself from the other facial recognition technology providers.”

NEC uses its NeoFace algorithms in its NeoFace Suite released to global markets: NeoFace Watch for operational, real-time surveillance, NeoFace Reveal for forensic analysis and SmartID for mobile applications.

* NeoFace: http://www.nec.com/en/global/solutions/safety/face_recognition/index.html

** http://biometrics.nist.gov/cs_links/face/frvt/frvt2013/NIST_8009.pdf

*** Results shown from the Multiple Biometric Evaluation 2010 and the 2011 follow-up study do not constitute endorsement of any particular product by the U.S. Government.

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