SHE looks like any other little girl coming up to her ninth birthday. 

 But experts believe this could be the face of Madeleine McCann today.

 Almost five years since she went missing, this image has been created by a crack computer team that helps police forces across the United States try to find long-term kidnap victims and other missing people.

Using forensic age-progression techniques also employed by the FBI, they believe Maddie would by now have

lost the wide-eyed, chubby- cheeked appearance she had when she vanished without trace, aged just three, in May 2007.

Police are expected to release their own age-progressed image of Maddie this week

as they renew attempts to solve the case.

Madeleine was snatched from a holiday apartment in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz while her parents Kate, 44, and Gerry, 43, of Rothley, Leics, dined with friends in a nearby tapas bar.