Methods of local features extraction in person authentication task by face thermographic image

Belov N.I., Ermak M.A., Dubinich E.A., Kuznetsov A.Y. Methods of local features extraction in person authentication task by face thermographic image. Scientific and Technical Journal of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics, 2022, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 279–286 (in Russian). doi: 10.17586/2226-1494-2022-22-2-279-286

The paper presents a methods of image local features extraction research in relation to people authentication problem by face thermogram. As a part of the study, there were formed two datasets for methods training and testing: photographic images and face images in the long-wavelength infrared specter (LWIR) with various factors. The novelty of this study is due to the approach to collecting datasets to verify the accuracy of authentication methods. The dataset was collected with more realistic conditions that affect the quality of authentication, such as changing facial expressions, wearing glasses, medical masks, applying make-up/cosmetics, changing the lighting and temperature conditions of the environment, rotating the head. The methods core is based on the idea of constructing a vector of image features while reducing the dimension and highlighting the boundaries. Likewise, the methods of this group cope well with extracting features task on images and are widely used in the tasks of authentication by 2D face image, as well as in other computer vision tasks. In this paper, four classical methods of local feature extraction are considered: the method of locally binary templates, Gabor wavelets, scale-invariant feature transformation, and Weber’s local descriptor. The classifiers for the feature vectors comparison in this research are SVM and the simplest Perceptron — the basic methods of machine learning. As part of the study, a comparative analysis of each method was carried out in relation to the collected datasets. The methods were trained and tested on a collected face dataset of over 632,000 images of 152 people. As a result of the comparative analysis, it can be concluded that the method of local binary features demonstrates the best result among the considered methods for both types of data: for face thermograms (for SVM — 0,57, for Perceptron — 0,58), for photographic images (for SVM — 0,71, for Perceptron — 0,73). Furthermore, the SIFT method showed similar results: for face thermograms (for SVM — 0,58, for Perceptron — 0,55), for photographic images (for SVM — 0,72, for Perceptron — 0,74). Gabor filters and Weber local descriptor application demonstrate a low accuracy rate in the authentication task by both types of data. The results of the work can be used in access control and management systems to increase the fault tolerance of person authentication. The appliance of the considered methods are effective in the tasks such as processing thermograms for authentication a person by so-called “secondary” signs, for example, by the veins and vessels on face patterns, in cases of facial expressions and appearance changes.

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