The 3D reconstruction of a face from a single 2D image could be made faster and more accurate with new software being developed by scientists at York University.

Dr. William Smith, a lecturer in computer vision at York, aims to combine the advantages of two face-recognition techniques to challenge the most advanced method for recovering 3D shapes when there is only one image to work from, such as an image from a CCTV camera.

The software could also be used in the gaming industry or to quantify the success of plastic surgery operations.

One of the techniques, which is also the most sophisticated, uses a morphable statistical model of facial appearance, while the approach that Smith has been working on uses classical shape-from-shading techniques.