Thermal Human Face Recognition for Biometric Security System

Abstract

Automatic face recognition has been comprehensively studied for more than four decades, since face recognition of individuals has many applications, particularly in human-machine interaction and security. Although face recognition systems have achieved a significant level of maturity with some realistic achievement, face recognition still remains a challenging problem due to large variation in face images. Face recognition techniques can be generally divided into three categories based on the face image acquisition methodology: methods that work on intensity images, those that deal with video sequences, and those that require other sensory (like 3D sensory or infra-red imagery) data. Researchers are using thermal infrared images for face recognition. Since thermal infrared images have some advantages over 2D images. In this chapter, an overview of some of the well-known techniques of face recognition using thermal infrared faces are discussed, and some of the drawbacks and benefits of each of these methods mentioned therein are discussed. This chapter talks about some of the most recent algorithms developed for this purpose, and tries to give a brief idea of the state of the art of face recognition technology. The authors propose one approach for evaluating the performance of face recognition algorithms using thermal infrared images. They also note the results of several classifiers on a benchmark dataset (Terravic Facial Infrared Database).