Evolutionary granular approach for recognizing faces altered due to plastic surgery

Abstract: The matching performance of automated face recognition has significantly improved over the past decade. At the same time several challenges remain that significantly affect the deployment of such systems in security applications. In this work, we study the impact of a commonly used face altering technique that has received limited attention in the biometric literature, viz., non-permanent facial makeup. Towards understanding its impact, we first assemble two databases containing face images of subjects, before and after applying makeup. We present experimental results on both databases that reveal the effect of makeup on automated face recognition and suggest that this simple alteration can indeed compromise the accuracy of a bio-metric system. While these are early results, our findings clearly indicate the need for a better understanding of this face altering scheme and the importance of designing algorithms that can successfully overcome the obstacle imposed by the application of facial makeup.

Abstract: Face recognition in controlled environments is nowadays considered rather reliable, and if face is acquired in proper conditions, a good accuracy level can be achieved by state-of-the-art systems. However, we show that, even under these desirable conditions, some intentional or unintentional face image alterations can significantly affect the recognition performance. In particular, in scenarios where the user template is created from printed photographs rather than from images acquired live during enrollment (e.g., identity documents ), digital image alterations can severely affect the recognition results. In this chapter, we analyze both the effects of such alterations on face recognition algorithms and the human capabilities to deal with altered images.

Abstract: The task of successfully matching face images obtained before and after plastic surgery is a challenging problem. The degree to which a face is altered depends on the type and number of plastic surgeries performed, and it is difficult to model such variations. Existing approaches use learning based methods that are either computationally expensive or rely on a set of training images. In this work, a fusion approach is proposed that combines information from the face and ocular regions to enhance recognition performance in the identification mode. The proposed approach provides the highest reported recognition performance on a publicly accessible plastic surgery database, with a rank-one accuracy of 87.4%. Compared to existing approaches, the proposed approach is not learning based and reduces computational requirements. Furthermore, a systematic study of the matching accuracies corresponding to various types of surgeries is presented.

Abstract: It has been observed that many face recognition algorithms fail to recognize faces after plastic surgery, which thus poses a new challenge to automatic face recognition. This paper first gives a comprehensive study on Face Recognition After Plastic Surgery (FRAPS), with careful analysis of the effects of plastic surgery on face appearance and its challenges to face recognition. Then, to address FRAPS problem, an ensemble of Gabor Patch classifiers via Rank-Order list Fusion (GPROF) is proposed, inspired by the assumption of the interior consistency of face components in terms of identity. On the face database of plastic surgery, GPROF achieves much higher face identification rate than the best known results in the literature. Furthermore, with our impressive results, we suggest that plastic surgery detection should be paid more attend to. To address this problem, a partial matching based plastic surgery detection algorithm is proposed, aiming to detect four distinct types of surgery, i.e., the eyelid surgery, nose surgery, forehead surgery and face lift surgery. Our experimental results demonstrate that plastic surgery detection is a nontrivial task, and thus deserves more research efforts.

Abstract: An exponential growth of the number of plastic surgery treatments specific to face (from the minimally-invasive ones to the real surgical procedures) has characterized the last two decades and it seems likely that this phenomenon, that has social and cultural meanings and implications, could spread even further in the next years as the average cost of these treatments is lowering and the wish for “beautification” is becoming part of the global esthetics sense. For these reasons, face recognition as an established research topic has a new major challenge: delivering methods capable of high recognition accuracy even in case probe and gallery differ by a surgical alteration of face shape. To this aim is of fundamental importance understanding the range and the extent of the modification produced by the various types of treatments or by a combination of them. We present a survey of the state of the art on this topic, starting by an analysis of the diffusion of the facial plastic surgery and describing the key aspects of each of the most statistically relevant treatments available, resumed by a synthetic table. The paper includes a brief description of all the approaches proposed in the field so far to the best of authors' knowledge and a comparison of the performance reported by the existing methods when applied to the most referenced plastic surgery face dataset to date. A critical discussion of the results achieved so far and an insight about the challenges that still have to be addressed concludes this work.

Abstract: From the Publisher: This book brings together - in an informal and tutorial fashion - the computer techniques, mathematical tools, and research results that will enable both students and practitioners to apply genetic algorithms to problems in many fields Major concepts are illustrated with running examples, and major algorithms are illustrated by Pascal computer programs No prior knowledge of GAs or genetics is assumed, and only a minimum of computer programming and mathematics background is required

Abstract: Presents a theoretically very simple, yet efficient, multiresolution approach to gray-scale and rotation invariant texture classification based on local binary patterns and nonparametric discrimination of sample and prototype distributions. The method is based on recognizing that certain local binary patterns, termed "uniform," are fundamental properties of local image texture and their occurrence histogram is proven to be a very powerful texture feature. We derive a generalized gray-scale and rotation invariant operator presentation that allows for detecting the "uniform" patterns for any quantization of the angular space and for any spatial resolution and presents a method for combining multiple operators for multiresolution analysis. The proposed approach is very robust in terms of gray-scale variations since the operator is, by definition, invariant against any monotonic transformation of the gray scale. Another advantage is computational simplicity as the operator can be realized with a few operations in a small neighborhood and a lookup table. Experimental results demonstrate that good discrimination can be achieved with the occurrence statistics of simple rotation invariant local binary patterns.

Abstract: In this paper, we present a novel scale- and rotation-invariant interest point detector and descriptor, coined SURF (Speeded Up Robust Features). It approximates or even outperforms previously proposed schemes with respect to repeatability, distinctiveness, and robustness, yet can be computed and compared much faster. This is achieved by relying on integral images for image convolutions; by building on the strengths of the leading existing detectors and descriptors (in casu, using a Hessian matrix-based measure for the detector, and a distribution-based descriptor); and by simplifying these methods to the essential. This leads to a combination of novel detection, description, and matching steps. The paper presents experimental results on a standard evaluation set, as well as on imagery obtained in the context of a real-life object recognition application. Both show SURF's strong performance.

Abstract: This paper presents a novel and efficient facial image representation based on local binary pattern (LBP) texture features. The face image is divided into several regions from which the LBP feature distributions are extracted and concatenated into an enhanced feature vector to be used as a face descriptor. The performance of the proposed method is assessed in the face recognition problem under different challenges. Other applications and several extensions are also discussed

Abstract: Two of the most critical requirements in support of producing reliable face-recognition systems are a large database of facial images and a testing procedure to evaluate systems. The Face Recognition Technology (FERET) program has addressed both issues through the FERET database of facial images and the establishment of the FERET tests. To date, 14,126 images from 1,199 individuals are included in the FERET database, which is divided into development and sequestered portions of the database. In September 1996, the FERET program administered the third in a series of FERET face-recognition tests. The primary objectives of the third test were to 1) assess the state of the art, 2) identify future areas of research, and 3) measure algorithm performance.