"We won't know if suspects have committed new offences unless we have eyeballed each image."

The Child Exploitation System (CETS) is under trial by the Queensland Police and the Australian Federal Police. It uses image recognition and hash functions to identify groups of images that involve the same victim in order to gather evidence for investigation.

"It's not nice work... the system saves the operator from that work," Steinhart said, adding the CETS and ANVIL will provide a complete system from "seizure to storage".

The system was built in 2005 by Canadian police services and regional Microsoft developers for more than $11 million, and is used by 25 of the nation's police forces. The United Kingdom, the US and Italy are some of the countries that use and share data from the CETS, and according to CrimTrac national manager of law enforcement systems, Stewart Cross, has led to the dismantling of "at least" three international paedophile rings.

Steinhart said online child exploitation material is distributed evenly between websites and peer-to-peer networks and said the government's Internet content filter will help restrict access to child porn websites.