---

---

---

---

Science Current Events and Science News RSS Feeds

---

---

Email a Friend Printer Friendly

Bank robbers and terrorists

November 27, 2002

Identifying suspected bank robbers, enemy troops, or terrorists is Lena Klasén's field of research. In scientific terms this is called image analysis of complex, articulated, and deformable objects related to the fields of crime and defense.

Lena Klasén has a history at the Swedish Defense Materiel Administration and the Swedish National Criminological Laboratory and is now working at the Swedish Defense Research Agency in Linköping. She will soon be submitting her doctoral dissertation at the Department of Electrical Engineering at Linköping University in Sweden.

The foundation of the dissertation is a method that Lena Klasén helped to develop to measure the height of a bank robber on the basis of pictures taken by surveillance cameras. The method was then elaborated to characterize both the form and movements of the individual in the pictures. The data produced can be compared to data from a possible suspect. Part of the thesis deals with new sensors that can improve surveillance techniques, while another section treats how objects can be spotted and followed in sequences of images.

Lena Klasén has often been called in as an expert in international contexts. She was commissioned by Interpol to provide a review of image analysis methods used by various criminological institutes. Three years ago she was also asked by an American authority to analyze video films from Waco, Texas, where federal forces besieged the so-called David sect holed up in a building complex in 1993. Her assignment was to study if the "flashes" seen in one of the films were caused by FBI fire on the besieged sect, or if they were simply reflections of the sun. Parts of these studies are included in the dissertation.

At present Lena Klasén works with image analysis systems designed to identify armored combat vehicles in the network-based Swedish defense system. Next year she will also be studying systems that can identify people in places where no one is expected to be found, or individuals that move in a suspicious manner.

"Such systems can be used to discover and identify terrorists, for example. They could also be used to spot enemy troops in an urban environment," she says.

Vetenskapsrådet (The Swedish Research Council)