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OmniPerception and WCC Group announce cutting edge ‘face-finding’ partnership

12 May 2006

GUILDFORD, United Kingdom and UTRECHT, Netherlands, 17 April 2006 - Leading British Computer Vision company OmniPerception Ltd and smart search and match experts WCC Group have today announced that they have integrated Affinity™, OmniPerception’s advanced automatic face-recognition technology, with ELISE, WCC’s high-performance matching software. The result is an optimised solution for customers in criminal justice, security and other markets that need to determine identities based on facial recognition and other biographic and biometric criteria.

At a time when identity fraud is hitting record levels and law enforcement is high on the national security agenda, reliable search methods for large databases including facial images are becoming ever more important tools in the fight against crime.

WCC’s ELISE software uses fuzzy logic and fusion to address all of the issues inherent in identity searching. ELISE calculates the degree of ‘fit’ across multiple biometric and biographic criteria and then fuses these scores to return the most likely matches. It can do all of this in a fraction of a second – even across very large databases.

OmniPerception’s Affinity™ technology brings a new level of accuracy and reliability to a whole range of automatic face recognition applications – from biometric passports to secure access control. Teamed up with ELISE, it creates the core automatic face-recognition capability to further enhance the overall identity matching solution.

This new Anglo-Dutch partnership was first forged in the USA, where both companies operate in the security arena. OmniPerception’s Affinity™ face-recognition technology is now fully integrated into WCC’s product, taking ELISE to a new level of effectiveness in cases where the automatic searching of face databases - such as travel and identification documents or criminal ‘mug shots’ - is an important part of the system required. The two companies are now co-marketing their combined technologies to customers worldwide.

David McIntosh, Chief Executive Officer of OmniPerception, said today: “Both our companies are really proud of this innovation. The potential value to the criminal justice community as well as to immigration, passport control and security practitioners is enormous. It is an excellent example of the best of British technology combining with a top European partner to create a best-in-class solution for customers worldwide.”

WCC Chief Executive, Peter Went also warmly welcomed the new development. “I am delighted to announce another major partnership for WCC. The combination of OmniPerception’s Affinity and WCC’s ELISE brings greatly enhanced capabilities to the identity market at a time when customers increasingly need highly reliable, high-performance biometric identity solutions.”

For further information:

Kathryn Bell, Republic PR (on behalf of OmniPerception), +44 (0) 20 7379 5000.  kathryn@republicpr.com

Rick Fernandez, Incendio International (on behalf of WCC Group), +1 770.973.8401, rick@incendiopr.com

About OmniPerception Ltd
OmniPerception is one of Britain’s most advanced computer vision companies, specialising in unique facial biometric technology and other highly advanced image processing.  Originally founded by top research engineers from the University of Surrey’s Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing and still closely linked with the Centre’s innovative output, the company is now established as a leading supplier of facial biometrics and advanced image processing solutions for customers world-wide.   

OmniPerception’s proprietary Affinity™ biometric technology is widely recognised as taking automatic face recognition to new higher levels of accuracy and effectiveness. The company’s powerful intellectual property portfolio and its commitment to on-going in-house Research and Development drives a growing range of products in global markets, in the field of machine readable travel and identity documents, access control solutions and other advanced image processing applications.

For more information, visit: www.omniperception.com

About WCC Group
Founded in 1996, WCC Services develops matching software for companies with business-critical matching needs. Its flagship product, ELISE, is a search and matching software that provides meaningful results with sub-second response time. WCC’s technology is used by many of the largest staffing firms and Departments of Labor in the world. ELISE is also utilized in the security and e-commerce industries. The company is headquartered in Utrecht, The Netherlands, and has offices in Palo Alto, California.

For more information, visit: www.wcc-group.com