Identifiable images can be found in eye reflections (Picture: University of Glasgow)

Police could soon be using eye reflections to help identify suspects, according to a new study.

At the moment it is possible to zoom in on high quality pictures and capture the image of whoever is being reflected in the eyes of the person that’s in the shot.

Authorities may choose to utilise this method, which was shown to work in an experiment carried out by the University of Glasgow.

The ‘mined’ images had a low megapixel count but could still be used for a positive identification.


‘For crimes in which the victims are photographed (eg, hostage taking, child sex abuse), reflections in the eyes of the photographic subject could help to identify perpetrators,’ said the authors of the paper, which was published in the PLoS ONE journal.



‘One possible extension of this technique would be to combine pairs of images recovered from the subject’s two eyes.’

They added the pictures could also possibly be used to ‘reconstruct a 3D representation of the environment from the viewpoint of the photographic subject.’