Age-Progression Technology

Children change and grow so quickly that a photograph taken today will be outdated in a very short period of time. For those parents whose child has been missing for many years, they know that their loved one has grown and matured and wonder how helpful it is to distribute an old photograph.

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) artists use commercial software to provide the electronic tools necessary to age-enhance photographs of long-term missing children in-house. Using this technology NCMEC creates an image of what the child may look like today. The process involves a mix of science, art, data on facial growth and maturing of facial features, and heredity using photographs of parents and siblings to merge their features with that of the missing child.

Jair Soares, missing at age 7             Jair at age 14, Age Progression by NCMEC

The age-enhanced illustration is distributed with the original photograph of the missing child. More than 453 missing children whose photographs were computer age-enhanced have been located. These illustrations have been remarkably accurate and, when viewed by someone who now knows the child, have lead to the direct recovery of that child. At the very least the illustration reminds viewers that the child has grown and matured. Such knowledge can be invaluable when reminding the public that the 10-year-old little girl who was abducted in 1985 will be a 34-year old woman in 2009. More than 17 unidentified deceased children have been identified as a result of facial reconstructions.

This initiative is supported by the Special Projects Unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Forensic Services Division of the U.S. Secret Service through their technical support of NCMEC age-progression and video laboratory functions.