Face identification using thermal image processing

A method for face identification has been developed by exploiting thermal image processing techniques. The method is based on 2-dimensional detection of the temperature distribution of the face, using infrared rays. The front-view face in the input image is normalized in terms of location and size, followed by measurement of the temperature distribution, the locally averaged temperature and the shape factors of face. The measured temperature distribution and the locally averaged temperature are separately used as input data for a neural network, while the values of shape factors are used for supervised classification. By integrating information from the NN and supervised classification, the face was identified with excellent accuracy. The shortcoming of visible ray image analysis that the accuracy of face identification is strongly influenced by lighting condition including variation of shadow, reflection and darkness is considered to be perfectly overcome by the present method exploiting infrared rays.