LTU Technologies has announced upgrades to its LTU engine/ON demand platform, which enables image matching and similarity search. The company also expanded its developer program to provide open access to its application programming interface.
Based in both Paris and New York, LTU Technologies is a 10-year-old company that claims to have been first to successfully deploy large-scale image-search and recognition solutions for purposes such as child exploitation monitoring and investigation, general law enforcement, intelligence analysis, intellectual property, media, life sciences and high-tech applications. Founded by MIT, Oxford and INRIA (French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control) researchers, LTU services advertising, photography, e-commerce and public sectors. Its clients include Corbis, Fotolia, Meredith Corporation and a number of French and American government agencies.
The company launched the LTU engine/ON demand platform last November to allow third parties to integrate image matching and similarity search into applications for mobile advertising, media, publishing and e-commerce. The functionality returns similar images despite changes to the original, which may include cropping, sizing, rotation, perspective, compilations and image quality. The platform is a hosted version of the LTU engine software that has been adopted by numerous companies and organizations since 2000. The main difference is its software-as-service business model that offers the same tools at prices directly linked to usage. For users, the platform requires little upfront investment and no additional hardware or recurring maintenance and upgrade fees.
According to the company, the LTU engine integrates seamlessly with most software and hardware systems. The new online platform, hopes company CEO and co-founder Alexandre Winter, will enable developers of mobile applications, Web sites and online communities to more easily and affordably make image recognition a standard feature of such products.
Upgrades announced this February include changes to the administrative console, such as enhanced status and history tools, and a new service mode that simplifies the testing process. Developers can join the program online.