Style transfer effectiveness for forensic sketch and photo matching

In this paper, the problem of comparing portrait photographic images and forensic sketches is considered. The paper analyzes the feasibility and potential advantage of applying style transfer methods to solve this problem. A method for comparing photographic and synthetic images is proposed. It consists of the feature extraction from a pair of images, the subsequent element-by-element difference between feature vectors, and further classification. We also consider a modification of the proposed method, which uses the style transfer from a sketch to a photographic image. Experimental research of the two mentioned methods is carried out on a test set of image and sketch pairs. Its results show the advantage of the modified method over the initial one.