Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	EP/C008057/1
Title:	Automated Classification of Shoemarks for use in Forensic Science
Principal Investigator:	Bouridane, Professor A
Other Investigators:	Crookes, Professor D
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department:	Computer Science
Organisation:	Queen's University of Belfast
Scheme:	Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts:	03 October 2005	Ends:	02 April 2009	Value (£):	204,878
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:	Image & Vision Computing
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:	Communications Electronics
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Summary on Grant Application Form
In this proposal, a novel approach to develop completely automatic matching of scene of crime shoemark images will be addressed. The research will be focused on using a novel approach which employs tuneable filters and multiresolution analysis. Transforms such as (Gabor/Complex/other wavelets) which have promising properties in terms of rotation, translation and scale invariance will be investigated. The goal is to develop a library of Gabor Wavelet implementations (and Complex Wavelets and others) to model real shoemark images. A full matching algorithm based on a distance measure between a scene of crime shoemark image and a candidate image in the database will also be investigated. We will also address the problem of noise and artefacts in scene of crime shoemarks, which have contributed to the poor performance of previous attempts to automatie the classification. We will concentrate on removing (i) noise and distortions resulting from the shoeprint capture process (ii) noise introduced during the formation of the actual shoemark (e.g. 'blurring' cause by the shoe sole sliding when making the impression and the overlaying of two or more shoemarks).Finally, we will develop and package the system to be suitable for integration with the existing (manual) UK-based commercial SICAR and Shoemark Identification Database systems.
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Organisation Website:	http://www.qub.ac.uk