Demographic Variability in Face Image Quality Measures

Face image quality assessment (FIQA) algorithms are being integrated into online identity management applications. These applications allow users to upload a face image as part of their document issuance process, where the image is then run through a quality assessment process to make sure it meets the quality and compliance requirements. Concerns about demographic bias have always been raised about biometric systems, given the societal issues this may cause. Therefore, it is important that any demographic variability in FIQA algorithms is assessed so it can be mitigated. In this work, we study demographic variability in all face image quality measures included in the ISO/IEC 29794-5 international standard across three demographic variables: age, gender, and skin tone. The results are rather promising and show no clear bias toward any specific demographic group for most measures. Only two quality measures are found to have rather considerable variations in their outcomes for different groups on the skin tone variable.