A Novel Algorithm to Tackle Eyeglasses and Beard Issues in Facial IR Recognition

Abstract

Face recognition via thermal infrared (IR) images is a modern recognition method that has found so interesting for many researchers during last decade. This method which operates via thermal features and the situation of human face vessels has much more benefits than visual-based methods. In these images, the changes of environmental light, which is one of the most important problems of face recognition via visual images, are completely eliminated. The most important face recognition problem via thermal IR images is the existence of diffusion obstacles like glasses, which blocks an accurate extraction of the face vessels situation. Using the proposed algorithm, this problem has been completely removed. In this article face recognition is performed through face vessels. In fact, the proposed method solves the issues of face recognition (like glasses wearing) in the thermal infrared domain suggested by Pavlidis et al in [5]. For extraction of the face features, the situation of vessel branches is used. Also, by choosing appropriate classification, fake vessels and false branches are removed. On the other hand, the best feature is extracted by using Dynamic Time Wrapping (DTW) algorithm which is resistant to nonlinear changes. The simulation on UTK-IRIS gallery set shows the accurate recognition rate 95% on the images with glasses. Thus, the proposed method has improved the recognition rate about 10% on same gallery set compared to the best other methods.