Exclusion of photos and new segmentation algorithms for the automatic face recognition

Abstract

Face recognition systems have an important disadvantage. It is not always possible to locate the face under the various appearing changes in the surrounding. These changes are above all varying illumination, rotation, translation and size variance. Using special picture processing methods, executed before the verification or identification process is started, these variances can be removed.

The vast majority of face recognition systems work with 2D pictures which were acquired with a standard CCD camera. Analysis has shown, that even the best face recognition systems can be deceived with a photo of a person held in front of the camera. For the exclusion of photos, several alternatives are possible. There are systems which use three dimensional pictures. The heat emission of a face can be measured etc. Nearly all of this methods have on thing in common: they need very complicated and expensive hardware. Easier and more efficient methods that guarantee an exclusion of photos will be presented.