The future face of identity checking

This is how we could prove our identity in the future.

After signatures, fingerprints and iris recognition, 3-D face maps encoded onto ID cards and passports are unveiled today.

The ground-breaking system of recording biometric information could be the key to our security.

Its designers claim it could solve Home Secretary David Blunkett's problem of how to ensure that new national identity cards are forgery-proof.

Pilot ID card projects have used iris and fingerprint recognition systems, but both have suffered problems. Long eyelashes render iris recognition useless, while

builders' fingerprints are often too worn down to be identified.

The new facial mapping system is virtually fool-proof, claims A4

Vision, the company that developed it. It works by projecting a microscopic grid pattern over the face. A

camera then records the way the grid has been disturbed by the subject's facial bone structure. As many as 50,000 points are recorded.

Data from the computerised image is stored in a chip inside a card or passport. Cameras at security points then compare the data on the chip with the face of the card-holder.

Kelly Richdale of A4 Vision said: "Using 3-D imaging, we are able to record every single one of the measurements and dimensions of the face." It is this, she says, that makes it so accurate - and unlike iris or fingerprint recognition, 3-D facial imaging is impossible to fake.

A system that maps the face using 14 points is able to identify one person out of a possible 40 million.

Legislation on compulsory ID cards has not yet been passed but by October-next year all new "e-passports" will have to carry facial biometric information.

The technology is already used by banks, airports and government institutions in France, the US and by some UK companies.

The facial mapping system is on display at the Biometrics 2004 conference at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster today.