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LTU Technologies and Exalead provide the first
"World Face Album"
Working with Exaleadi's database of 1 billion online images, search results can be narrowed down to facial portraits only by LTU's image classifier
Washington, D.C. - May 14, 2007 - LTU Technologies, the global leader in image search and recognition solutions, announced today that the company's technology has been chosen to provide new portrait detection capabilities within Exalead.com. Exalead is a global provider of search software. Exalead.com gives internet users access to more than 8 billion Web pages and 1 billion online images. This technological partnership has resulted in the world's first "world face album", i.e. a search engine that helps users find close-ups or mugshots of their search objects.
The integration of software between LTU and Exalead allows internet users, for the first time, to easily narrow down image search results to only those with faces in the picture. After a keyword is typed (in http://www.exalead.com/search/imageHomepage), the images matching that keyword are returned. Next, clicking the "Face" refinement option, powered by LTU Technologies, restricts the returned results to those pictures representing faces or portraits.
LTU's technology is based on the "Image DNA", a unique descriptor that indexes images by their visual content. Image DNAs can be used in real time to search for images by content, or to classify images based on specified visual characteristics (pornography, copyrighted material...).
"We are very pleased to provide this unique image classification feature to Exalead.com and we look forward to future collaborations with Exalead in image and video recognition," said Chahab Nastar, CEO of LTU Technologies. "After having deployed our software with a large number of Homeland Security and Intelligence customers for the last 7 years, LTU Technologies is now ready for leveraging its software for Web 2.0 or User-generated content web applications. The Exalead partnership is a first step in that direction" Nastar added.
"Exalead and LTU share the same vision - to develop next generation search capabilities that will meet the diverse needs of our end users. LTU is looking forward to extend this type of partnership with other Corporate and Internet players," commented P. Kevin Smith, VP of Sales North America for LTU Technologies.
"Exalead's strong focus on innovation is once again demonstrated by this ambitious and innovative use of cutting-edge technology for a novel and useful Consumer application. We are delighted to collaborate with a dynamic and innovative company like LTU and look forward to future collaboration with them" said Francois Bourdoncle, CEO of Exalead
To learn more about LTU's integration with Exalead, please go to: http://www.exalead.com/search/imageHomepage
About LTU Technologies - Founded in 1999 by veteran scientists of MIT, Oxford and INRIA, LTU Technologies is today established as the standard software for content-based search, retrieval and classification of images -- a technology referred to as "Image Mining". LTU's technology has found mission-critical applications within the Government sector, namely in child abuse and stolen art investigations, in computer forensics, in intelligence and in counter-terrorism. LTU also operates in various commercial markets such as brand & copyright protection, enterprise security, digital asset management, e-commerce, and mobile imaging. LTU is backed by a major Japanese company, Jastec [TSE:9717], and has offices in Paris & Washington D.C. For more information, please visit www.LTUtech.com
