A novel face detection algorithm using thermal imaging

Abstract

Face detection is an important step for successful face recognition system. Variation in lighting conditions result in degradation in performance of face detection. Thermal images are not affected by variation in illumination. In this paper, we have proposed a novel face detection algorithm by using thermal imaging. In our proposed algorithm, Otsu's thresholding method is used for converting the thermal images into binary form. Horizontal projection of the image is calculated to identify the global minimum that helps in identifying height and width of the head region. We have developed a UTAR-YK Thermal database to verify the performance of the proposed algorithm. Experimental results show that our proposed algorithm has an average accuracy of 92.16%, that is measured by finding the overlapping ratio between the automatically-detected face region and manually drawn face region. An average 1.13 bounding box ratio, which is the comparison of the size of the box between the automatically-detected face region and manually drawn face region.

Multispectral hand features for secure biometric authentication systems

“…Review of existing research works using thermal images for identity recognition showed that initially they have only been used to achieve better segmentation of the selected element (e.g., hand, 19,20 vein pattern, 21 face, 22,23 human silhouette 24,25 ), because of a significant difference in temperature between the object and the background. Current works can be divided into three groups: thermal imaging for hand vein biometrics, 26,27 thermal images preprocessing (segmentation methods), 28,29 and direct use of thermal features 18,30 .…”

Color Enhancement Algorithm using the Integrated K-means Clustering and Inverted Otsu Method for Thermal Object Characterization

“…Lastly, various papers presented with specific applications. In [35] discussed an algorithm for face detection utilizing thermal images, however, this paper has no actual hardware set-up and simulation. Reference [36] application is for thermal imaging of electrochemical power systems.…”

Implementation challenge and analysis of thermal image degradation on R-CNN face detection

“…N many security, surveillance or access control applications face detection algorithms are applied. In top level secure objects such as important government buildings, for access control, face detection and recognition systems have been implemented in order to verify user's identity [1], [2]. These systems are also used in security checkpoints at airports and in authentication processes for secure banking.…”