The Images Reflected in The Eyes of a Photographed Can Recover

The zoom in the eye of the people photographed reveals he was looking

A study conducted by scientists at the University of York has shown that you can retrieve the images reflected in the pupil of a person photographed. This work may be a breakthrough in forensics, since you can use this system in cases of hostage taking or child sexual abuse, among others, as explained by the lead author, Rob Jenkins.

Experts have noted that the pupil of the eye in a photograph can have “a hidden information.” They can see a photographer and bystanders, some faces may be used as evidence during criminal investigations to reconstruct networks of partners or to link people with a place.

The authors of this research, which was published in PLoS ONE, have used a zoom high resolution passport type photographs to retrieve images from viewer that could be identified accurately by observers, despite their low quality.

To establish whether the ‘reflected’ could be identified from the extracted images, researchers presented the faces as stimuli in a kind of game. The observers were not familiar with the faces of passersby performed recognition with 71 percent accuracy, while participants who knew they did the faces shown with 84 percent accuracy.

For scientists, in a test of spontaneous recognition, observers could reliably name a familiar face appeared in a reflection in the eyes.

The pupil, a black mirror

“The pupil of the eye is like a black mirror. To improve the image, you have to zoom in and adjust the contrast,” said Jenkins, adding that “a picture of a face that is recovering from a reflection in the eye is 30,000 times smaller than the subject’s face. ” “In research, the area around the face to those who were there was reflected 322 pixels on average,” he noted.

In his view, “in the context of criminal investigations, this system could be used for many cases, and also may be particularly important in cases in which the authors of the penalty photographing their victims.” “The reflections in the eyes of the victims could reveal the identity of the photographer,” he insisted.

In this regard, he indicated that some 40 million photos are uploaded per day just to Instagram. “Faces are among the most frequently photographed objects and this study serves as a reminder for users to be careful what climbing” stated. “Eyes from your pictures can show where you are and with whom,” he warned.