NEC Corporation (NEC) along with NEC Corporation of America (NECAM), one of the providers and integrators of advanced IT, communications, managed services, and biometric solutions, announced that NEC’s face recognition technology achieved the highest performance evaluation in the recent Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) 2014 performed by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Results were released in NIST’s Interagency Report —NISTIR 8009— Performance of Face Recognition Algorithms.

The NIST report is widely viewed as the benchmark of determining which face recognition software solution is the most accurate for one-to-many searching under a variety of situations.

NEC’s technology took first place for the third consecutive time following the 2009 Multiple Biometric Grand Challenge (MBGC 2009) and 2010-2011 Multiple Biometrics Evaluation (MBE 2010-2011).

The most recent FRVT test for one-to-many searching (class C) evaluated the accuracy of database enrollments and personal identity searches using massive volumes of face image data (over 1.6 million people), including multiple “high quality” criminal mugshots, “low quality” webcam snap shots, and “standard quality” passport/visa photo images.

Twelve commercial vendors and four academic institutions participated within the FRVT evaluation, which consisted of several test scenarios designed to determine accuracy based on measured error rates.

Not only did NEC’s search accuracy exceed competitors by a wide margin, it also improved significantly from the past MBE 2010 testing.