Scaling: Buildings, Warm Blooded Animals, & Missing Children

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Scaling is used to project the appearance of missing children after several years of growth and maturation. A human does not simply evolve from a miniature looking adult to a full sized adult. Changes are seen in the size of a baby's head, shorter limbs, and the size of eyes relative to the head. Each part of the body develops at a different rate, based upon the age of the human. Freeman (2009) explains that graph paper can be used to compare a picture of a baby's skull to that of an adult skull. Image stretching is used to predict appearances of a child into an adult, based upon pictures available of the missing child. In addition to photographs of the missing child, the child's siblings and parent's pictures are used to help chart age progression. If a child has been missing for 10 years, and would currently be 13 years of age, the child's three-year-old picture is merged with pictures of his or her sibling's and parents at thirteen years old. This helps the search for missing children to be more accurate.
Forensics anthropology studies skeletal remains to determine the age at death and help to identify the remains. This could be done in the event of a large disaster (earthquake, plane crash) or when the remains of a single unknown person are found. Officially, the American Board of Forensic Anthropology (AFBA) defines forensic anthropology as the "application of the science of physical or biological anthropology to the legal process" (ABFA, 2013). The enotes site (http://www.enotes.com/forensic-science/facial-recognition/) discusses the use of computers to help identify missing children, criminals, and persons of interest. Computers use an image of the face, "extracting features, comparing it to images in a database, and identifying matches"(enotes, n.d.). By converting the features into numbers, and then comparing these numbers to another face (for instance the siblings and parents of the missing child) the process is executed. The site points out that facial recognition may be determined based upon the shape and position of features (geometrical) or based on a template (photometric). The computer software uses algorithms to extract facial features and in the best cases, have a 90% accuracy rating. Scaling is used before feature extraction so that "that the size of the face and its positioning is optimal" (enotes, n.d.) for the rest of the process. The software may be used to confirm an identity or as identification of a person from many. Enotes describes the use of three-dimensional analysis in which a "virtual mesh reflecting a person's facial shape" is generated, using "a near-infrared light to scan a person's face and repeating the process a couple of times. The nodal points are located on the mesh, generating thousands of reference points", helping to make the process more accurate.
The ForensicScience.org website (http://www.forensicscience.org/resources/guide-to-forensic-science/) describes forensic reconstruction techniques utilizing the skull of the deceased to "create a three-dimensional representation of the face of the person, using materials such as clay and props." Typically, scientists are given very minimal data and must try ...