A shoeprint image coding and retrieval system

Footwear marks frequently provide good evidence in certain types of crime. This is particularly true now that sports shoes of all kinds are in popular use. Such footwear is characterised by a huge variety of designs which are often complex in appearance. Microcomputers are now sufficiently powerful to handle large quantities of data including detailed images. This has been accompanied by the availability of user friendly programs running in graphical environments. We have capitalised on these developments and developed SICAR, a system to capture, store, code and retrieve shoeprint images. SICAR stands for Shoeprint Image Coding and Retrieval; it consists of a microcomputer, an image scanning device and storage capability for thousands of images. The computer is TSM compatible and the software runs within Microsoft´s Windows. Each system can operate independently or be networked to other SICAR instruments. It combines the ability of humans to carry out complex pattern recognition tasks with the power of computers to manage large databases. We have no knowledge of any system that approaches the capabilities of SICAR, although a computer based scheme for the coding and storage of shoe sole patterns has been described by W. Ashley (1990)