BEIJING, Nov. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- Scientists released a new device in Japan that can identify a victim's ID in less than four seconds and save drawn-out trauma for relatives of those killed in disasters, media reported Wednesday.

When many people are killed in a disaster such as an earthquake, plane crash or attack, experts currently identify their bodies one by one by comparing teeth with radiograph images or casts supplied by the victims's dentists.

But the process can take weeks and is not fully reliable, said Eiko Kosuge, a dentist and radiologist at Kanagawa Dental College in Japan who led the study.

The new system can automatically compare an image of a victim's teeth with numerous dental records and offer a match in less than four seconds, reducing the workload of forensic experts by 95 percent.

It uses a high-precision image-matching technique named Phase-Only Correlation, which aligns images and measures their similarities.

(Agencies)