from www.usatoday.com – Children whose sexual abuse has been circulated in photos online could get some relief from new software that makes it easier to remove child pornography from the Internet.

Microsoft, which developed the PhotoDNA software, is donating it today to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, a non-profit group that will use it to protect the abused children.

The center reviews 250,000 images of child pornography every week and sends what it considers the most egregious to online service providers to be removed.

The new technology will allow the center’s computers to find more images that match an initial picture, even if it has been altered.

“It will make a huge difference,” says Ernie Allen,[pictured] president of the center, which receives funding from the Justice Department to work with police agencies. The center has helped identify 2,692 child pornography victims, most of whom were prepubescent kids abused by someone they knew.

Allen says even though it’s impossible to prosecute every sex offender, at least the distribution of their photos can be reduced.

“It’s very much like DNA,” says Hany Farid, a professor of computer science at Dartmouth College who worked with Microsoft on PhotoDNA. He says it identifies a photo’s unique characteristics and, unlike previous software, remains accurate even if the size changes by as much as 50%.

“We can’t allow people to keep trading these horrifying images online when we have the technology to do something about it,” says Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel. “These children have been through enough.”