The atlas of facial features of European females was compiled following the atlas "name", which is already well-established in the forensic practice. It was composed within the scope of the EU-funded project "Optimisation of Methods for Identification of Persons from Photographs (photoidentification): A Contribution to Combat and Prevention of Crime in Europe". Along with its predecessor this atlas should promote standardization in the procedure of photoidentification.
For the manual photoidentification of a person, a suitable photograph of the suspect must be available. The next step of the analysis is the examination of the number and quality of recognizable facial features in the images from the surveillance camera (reference photographs). The suspect's features are then compared with the reference photographs. For the final interpretation, the knowledge of the frequencies of individual facial characteristics in a respective population is of crucial importance. The presence of rare features allows for more significant statements of similarity.
Photoidentification of females is rarely required compared to males. However cases involving females occur regularly in the forensic practise. Needless to say (Naturally, Obviously) features and variations of the male faces cannot be directly applied in such cases. Therefore, a separate atlas for facial features of females has been composed.
This atlas provides a basis for a standardized recording of the presented facial traits and their variations and also for further acquisition of data to establish frequencies of these features for females.