1. To take by force or surprise, to seize: The police captured the bank robbers just before they were about to make their getaway.
2. To grasp the essence of something: With a few strokes of his brush, the artist was capturing the woman's appearance in the portrait.

The act or method of gathering biometric data from an individual while the person is physically present.

The term is used in conjunction with security systems that identify people based on a previous recording of one or more of their body characteristics.

Live capture is used in some automatic teller machines (ATMs) to ensure that the person making the transaction is the individual to whom the magnetic ATM card belongs. One approach is iris scanning.

The subject must look in the general direction of a camera and the eyes must be uncovered. Otherwise, the transaction will not be completed. Another approach to live capture is facial recognition, which has been suggested as a way to scan crowds for suspected terrorists.

An advantage of live capture is that relevant action can be taken at the moment the data is gathered; for example, the police can be summoned if an intruder on a property is identified as a known criminal suspect by facial recognition equipment.

In contrast, so-called dead or passive capture is used primarily to gather evidence or make comparisons of samples when the subject is not physically present.