FaceMask: A New Image Dataset for the Automated Identification of People Wearing Masks in the Wild

Abstract

The rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, in early 2020, has radically changed the lives of people. In our daily routine, the use of a face (surgical) mask is necessary, especially in public places, to prevent the spread of this disease. Furthermore, in crowded indoor areas, the automated recognition of people wearing a mask is a requisite for the assurance of public health. In this direction, image processing techniques, in combination with deep learning, provide effective ways to deal with this problem. However, it is a common phenomenon that well-established datasets containing images of people wearing masks are not publicly available. To overcome this obstacle and to assist the research progress in this field, we present a publicly available annotated image database containing images of people with and without a mask on their faces, in different environments and situations. Moreover, we tested the performance of deep learning detectors in images and videos on this dataset. The training and the evaluation were performed on different versions of the YOLO network using Darknet, which is a state-of-the-art real-time object detection system. Finally, different experiments and evaluations were carried out for each version of YOLO, and the results for each detector are presented.