A GPRS-based remote human face identification system for handheld devices

Human face recognition has been widely used in applications such as video surveillance camera, criminal identification, and content-based image retrieval. With the advances in wireless communication, Web technologies, smart wireless accessories, and computing power, it is now becoming feasible to make these applications available as electronic services. This paper describes a PRS-enabled PDA or mobile phone based human face identification. This system can be used in applications such as instant criminal identification, wireless home surveillance, and other imaging security services based on human face authentication. The proposed system allows the user to send an image of a human face, acquired through a PRS-enabled mobile phone or a PDA bundled with a built-in camera, to remotely perform automatic face recognition on a set of distributed repositories of human face images. The user will then instantly receive details of the person if a match is found. The proposed face recognition algorithm combines both geometric facial features and template matching for efficient face recognition. The system has been tested on a large number of human face images captured using cameras with different image resolution and under different lighting conditions, und the obtained results were very promising.