Mug Shot by Rob Meyer Sam Reese Sheppard, who has long maintained that his father, Dr. Sam Sheppard, had nothing to do with the killing of Mrs. Sheppard on a July night 45 years ago, might well have wished that a crime-fighting tool now under development at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory existed back in 1954. Because that tool is sophisticated enough that, if it had been employed at the Sheppard crime scene, it would very likely have ferreted out evidence missed by investigators of the day - evidence that might have altered the jury's decision. Diagram of a prototype AFI system that NOVA Online observed at work in the basement of MIT's Lincoln Laboratory. One of the most promising applications for the new technology is the three-dimensional mug shot. Traditional 2-D mugs, long the standard in suspect identification, have obvious limitations.
Authorities typically photograph a suspect from only two angles, under a single lighting condition.
A witness to the crime, however, may have caught a fleeting glimpse of the suspect in the dark, or a security camera may have captured his or her blurry image from only one unnatural angle. Well, let's just say the FBI, for one, is very interested in what Lincoln Laboratory is up to. The subject sits in a dentist's chair facing a camera, all but oblivious to a zebra pattern of near-infrared light illuminating his face. Within seconds, a 3-D rendering of the subject's head appears on the screen. Varying the light source could help witnesses identify suspects.