If you're planning on getting a tattoo , you'd better think again, since the police will soon be able to track you down by it.
An American government agency has commissioned scientists to create image-based software that will be able to recognize tattoos from drawings on paper and identify differences between similar designs, which will be able to work even in...adverse conditions, such as cases where the tattoo is covered by hair or a shirt.
This new technology is called “Tatto Recognition Technology–Challenge” (Tatt–C) and made its first appearance last year, but was actually used very recently at a conference of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Maryland.
The main goal of this new technology is to evaluate the ability of tattoo to detect and recover tattoos. It will also be able to recognize whether an image contains a tattoo.
This method may not be as accurate as biometric identification, fingerprints, and iris recognition, but Stephen Fischer , the head of the multimedia division at the FBI 's Criminal Justice Intelligence Services division in West Virginia, told Nature that "all it needs to do is provide some utility in narrowing down suspect lists and providing information about a crime."
