Evidence quality imaging for bank security

Abstract

A long standing problem within the banking security and law enforcement communities has been the inability to use the images recorded with conventional security cameras as definitive evidence in a court of law. The issue with affordable solid state or tube security cameras is the spatial resolution and gray scale resolution. Neither is sufficient. Alternatives using film cameras have proved too expensive and embarrassingly unreliable. The advancement of high resolution solid state cameras promises to overcome today's technological and economic barriers. A series of static tests of the EG&G Reticon model MD4013 camera in a major financial institution in Chicago, Illinois showed such good results that a full scale installation trial was initiated. This trial took place during the late winter through the summer of 1995. The paper first describes the million pixel CCD camera used in the customer's trial, then describes the image capture, storage and communications system used, and finally reports the results of the trial.