Schalk Mouton - Beeld

Pretoria - A face recognition expert says there's a 65% chance that the man in the controversial sex video is the same one featured in an older photograph of Joost van der Westhuizen in a Springbok jersey.

Beeld has forwarded some of the video clips and some photographs of Van der Westhuizen to Barry Fryer Dudley, a face recognition expert from Durban, for analysis.

Not even the different photographs of Van der Westhuizen provided a 100% match, and the highest probability that the two people in these photographs are one and the same was 81%.

The software erroneously indicated that the photographs were those of two different people, while all the photographs featured Van der Westhuizen himself.

Dudley, who provides face recognition software to 19 casinos in the country that they use for access control, said the quality of the video clips was poor and he would be able to make a more accurate analysis if he were able to analyse the video himself.

Beeld also sent the photographs and video clips to Professor Colin Tredoux, head of the psychology department at the University of Cape Town and a face recognition expert. He said it was "virtually impossible" to determine whether it was indeed Van der Westhuizen in the video clips.

Tredoux said the quality and conditions for a photograph or video that is used for face recognition has to be excellent if you want to use the face recognition software to determine who the person in the image is.

"This software would already struggle to identify the person in the video clips if he were upright, but in these video clips he is lying down and looking up, so in my view it is virtually impossible," Tredoux said.

The quality of the clips from the video further hampers the process.

There are different types of face recognition software that work in different ways, but their effectiveness was questionable, Tredoux said.

"Two or three academic works have been published on the possibility of using closed circuit television for face recognition, but the possibility is slight," he said.

The lighting and quality of the images must be adequate and various views of the person must be visible under different conditions. It is also easier if the person is known to the analyst.

Van der Westhuizen insists it's not him in the video.