Computer, enhance

December 28, 2013 8:12 AM

Researchers at the University of York were able to identify people using the reflection of their faces in pupils of photographs of other people. Original paper
posted by Chrysostom (32 comments total)

Uncrop.
posted by dmd at 8:13 AM on December 28, 2013 [15 favorites]

Give me a hard copy right there.
posted by The Whelk at 8:16 AM on December 28, 2013 [8 favorites]

I have to guide people through a newfangled touch interface that I am often on the other side of a counter from. Usually I can tell where they're at in the process from the reflection in their eyes or on their glasses.

Between this post and the one about fire ants, I feel like today's front page is a weird lesson in social responsibility.
posted by carsonb at 8:16 AM on December 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

That's me wearing sunglasses at night from now on.
posted by arcticseal at 8:25 AM on December 28, 2013 [5 favorites]

I am working on basically putting my apartment 10-20 years into the future and backporting some bits of SF into IRL because I am tired of technology being shitty for no good reason. "Computer, enhance" is definitely going to work, and probably an impractical stunty "Computer, tea, Earl Grey, hot."
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 8:36 AM on December 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

Reminds me of an episode of Twin Peaks...the mystery genre is ahead of scientists by a mile...
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 8:38 AM on December 28, 2013

probably an impractical stunty "Computer, tea, Earl Grey, hot."


buffering... buffering...

"Error. Pearl Jay not recognized. Would you like to synchronize your repository?"

"No! EARL G-"

"Would you like to schedule synchronization?"

"NO!!!"

"Scheduling synchronization."

buffering... buffering...

"Unable to schedule synchronization. Would you like to launch the troubleshooting guide?"

"NO! N-O."

"I understand."

"Computer, I want some fucking earl grey tea."

"Error. Pearl Jay not recognized. Would you like to synchronize your repository?"
posted by Foci for Analysis at 8:58 AM on December 28, 2013 [14 favorites]

If this becomes a part of the domestic-surveillance arsenal, I'm going to see if I can make a pair of non-reflective contact lenses, printed with a tiny image of myself flipping everyone off.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:59 AM on December 28, 2013 [5 favorites]

Scientists at the Dario Argento Research Institute have advanced the Four Flies on Grey Velvet Clock ahead by two minutes.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:59 AM on December 28, 2013 [3 favorites]

That's me wearing sunglasses at night from now on.

Better get matte-finish sunglasses.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:07 AM on December 28, 2013 [5 favorites]

Better get matte-finish sunglasses.

And, presumably, matte-finish frames, belt buckles, jewelery etc. I mean, there's nothing magic about the eyeball reflection--it's just a reflective surface that can be found in a lot of photographs.
posted by yoink at 9:21 AM on December 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

In sort of the same realm, I just read a paper about stealing your smartphone PIN by shooting a video of the reflections from your eyes, then applying "fingertip analysis." Pretty amazing.

Seeing Double: Reconstructing Obscured Typed Input from Repeated Compromising Reflections, from research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
posted by gemmy at 9:23 AM on December 28, 2013 [2 favorites]

Redeye is nature's way of protecting the innocent.
posted by Curious Artificer at 9:43 AM on December 28, 2013 [3 favorites]

Hmmm, the first thing I though of was a spy story wherein the eye of the antagonist gave away the move of the man behind to the hero, the second was a tale of the murder's image trapped in the eye of the dead.

These people must read a lot.

Does it work as well if your eyeballs are little, beady, and squinty?
posted by BlueHorse at 10:05 AM on December 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

Wow. I tried it on this photo & it totally worked.
posted by univac at 10:11 AM on December 28, 2013 [4 favorites]

@BlueHorse: a tale of the murder's image trapped in the eye of the dead

And there's Kipling's At the end of the passage, where the photo reveals the dream-demon that killed a man.
posted by raygirvan at 10:22 AM on December 28, 2013 [2 favorites]

All that reflectoporn out there suddenly got a lot less anonymous.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:27 AM on December 28, 2013

Are they famous crimes for which this might add information? Kidnappings come to mind when they took a photo of the hostage.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:59 AM on December 28, 2013

Jenkins did the study with a high-resolution (39 megapixels) Hasselblad camera

the whole-face area for the reflected bystanders was 322 pixels on average

So with a super high res camera (and a "passport-style" closeup photo) the reflected face is 18 pixels on a side?

I'm kind of more impressed by whatever image processing they're using to turn an 18x18 image into something that still looks like a face
posted by ook at 11:19 AM on December 28, 2013 [3 favorites]

Related from Scientific American, December 7, 2012 — Eye-Opener: Why Do Pupils Dilate in Response to Emotional States?

Princeton University psychologist Daniel Kahneman showed several decades ago that pupil size increases in proportion to the difficulty of a task at hand. Calculate nine times 13 and your pupils will dilate slightly. Try 29 times 13 and they will widen further and remain dilated until you reach the answer or stop trying. Kahneman says in his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, that he could divine when someone gave up on a multiplication problem simply by watching for pupil contraction during the experiment.

"The pupils reflect the extent of mental effort in an incredibly precise way," Kahneman said in an interview with the German news magazine Der Spiegel, adding, "I have never done any work in which the measurement is so precise." When he instructed subjects to remember and recite a series of seven digits, their pupils grew steadily as the numbers were presented one by one and shrunk steadily as they unloaded the digits from memory.

Subsequent research found that the pupils of more intelligent people (as defined by their Scholastic Aptitude Test scores) dilated less in response to cognitive tasks compared with those of lower-scoring participants, indicating more efficient use of brainpower.

Scientists have since used pupillometry to assess everything from sleepiness, introversion and sexual interest to race bias, schizophrenia, moral judgment, autism and depression. And whereas they haven't been reading people's thoughts per se, they've come pretty close.

Better wear sunglasses and keep that tape over your webcam.
posted by cenoxo at 11:29 AM on December 28, 2013 [5 favorites]

The more I see things like this, the more grateful I am that I will be dead sooner than later now.
I feel sorry for my kids, though, who still have a lifetime of this ahead of them.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:31 AM on December 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

...non-reflective slit sunglasses, that is.
posted by cenoxo at 12:28 PM on December 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

there's nothing magic about the eyeball reflection--it's just a reflective surface that can be found in a lot of photographs

Well, it's not magic, but the eye is particularly well suited for this because it's optically smooth, spherical, and small. Which means the virtual image of the reflected world will less than an inch back from the surface of the eye, and will still be in relatively sharp focus.

I've taken some macro photos of some art reflected in people's eyes (self-link). As you can see from the blurry eyelashes, the depth of field is very narrow, as is usual for macro photography - but the iris and reflection are still both in focus. With a flat surface, the virtual image of the photographer would appear to be twice as far from the camera as the subject, which would require a very small aperture to be in focus. Here is a self-portrait of a sort; my reflection in a giant disco ball. Since that is made out of a set of flat mirrors, I was unable to focus on both the ball and myself, even though the depth of field was much larger than it was the macro shots. As a result you can't see the edges of the individual mirrors sharply. Normally photographers would set the focus so that the subject and their belt buckle are in focus, and the reflections in that belt buckle are not.
posted by aubilenon at 12:57 PM on December 28, 2013 [2 favorites]

Why does science have to be so creepy these days? Spying, making uncanny valley robots, drones, four-legged robots to hunt you down, new ways to pry into people's lives. We don't have money for new antibiotics that we are all going to need real soon, or to move us off of fossil fuels, but creepy science with huge potential for abuse, we've got an endless supply of cash for that.
posted by emjaybee at 1:58 PM on December 28, 2013 [8 favorites]

I don't understand how this is some big discovery. I'm always ruining close-up photos of my dog with reflections of my stupid self in his eyes.
posted by HotToddy at 1:59 PM on December 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

Isn't the pupil's ability to reflect an image of who the person is looking at the whole reason we use the word to describe a student?
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:09 PM on December 28, 2013 [2 favorites]

emjaybee, I'm just waiting for someone without hope to build an Earth-destroyer set to detonate in 50 years and then sell it to the highest childless bidder. Surely there's a market for that!

Greed is the greatest motivator of scientific development. When enough swathes of the population are wiped out by gram negative bacteria surely some budding entrepreneur will cook some of those new ABX up in his plucky home laboratory straight away.

Or maybe some meth lab will make it by accident and be like "dude, seems legit"
posted by lordaych at 5:00 PM on December 28, 2013

Hmmm, the first thing I though of was a spy story wherein the eye of the antagonist gave away the move of the man behind to the hero, the second was a tale of the murder's image trapped in the eye of the dead.

Do you remember the titles?
posted by Sangermaine at 5:27 PM on December 28, 2013

I knew someone would ask me that!!

I'll think on it, but you gotta gimmie a break. Some days I can't remember what I had for breakfast. Maybe if I sleep on it...
posted by BlueHorse at 9:22 PM on December 28, 2013

I knew someone would ask me that!!

I'll think on it, but you gotta gimmie a break. Some days I can't remember what I had for breakfast. Maybe if I sleep on it...

Try the TVTropes article.
posted by Peccable at 10:10 PM on December 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

Now I can find the asshole that messed up my drivers license photo so many years ago!
posted by oceanjesse at 10:30 PM on December 28, 2013

Wikipedia — "Optography is the process of viewing or retrieving an optogram, an image on the retina of the eye. A belief that the eye "recorded" the last image seen before death was widespread in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was a frequent plot device in fiction of the time, to the extent that police photographed the victims' eyes in several real-life murder investigations, in case the theory was true. Although repeatedly debunked as a forensic method, there is a scientific basis behind the idea."

More in Optograms and Fiction: Photo in a Dead Man’s Eye.
posted by cenoxo at 2:43 AM on December 29, 2013 [2 favorites]