Composite sketch recognition via deep network - a transfer learning approach

Sketch recognition is one of the integral components used by law enforcement agencies in solving crime. In recent past, software generated composite sketches are being preferred as they are more consistent and faster to construct than hand drawn sketches. Matching these composite sketches to face photographs is a complex task because the composite sketches are drawn based on the witness description and lack minute details which are present in photographs. This paper presents a novel algorithm for matching composite sketches with photographs using transfer learning with deep learning representation. In the proposed algorithm, first the deep learning architecture based facial representation is learned using large face database of photos and then the representation is updated using small problem-specific training database. Experiments are performed on the extended PRIP database and it is observed that the proposed algorithm outperforms recently proposed approach and a commercial face recognition system.