Neural Gas Counter Propagation Neural Network (NG CPNN): A Novel Model for Face Recognition

The advent of biometric technology has enhanced security in various ways, especially by lowering the propensity for circumvention which was obtainable in traditional recognition measures such as the use of passwords, tokens, smart cards, PIN etc. Particularly facial recognition is currently a hot topic, which has evolved over time. A face recognition system is supposed to automatically recognize faces in pictures and videos by receiving a two-dimensional face image as input and comparing it to a predefined database of faces to outputs a discernible face image in the end. Despite the various algorithms used in face recognition, the problems of occlusion, light conditions and facial variation still persist. However, this study has implemented and presented Neural Gas Counter Propagation Neural Network (NG CPNN) as a novel model for face recognition systems.The implementation of model was carried out using 600 face images, pre-processed by histogram equalization, while face features were extracted by Principal Component Analysis. The novelty of NG CPNN was established by utilizing computational time, sensitivity, and accuracy as performance assessment measures at four distinct threshold values. The result shows computation time of 72.36s, accuracy of 96.25%, sensitivity of 98.33% at 0.8, 0.8, and 0.2 thresholds respectively. Finally, it was concluded based on empirical result and statistical evidence that NG-CPN is a novel model for face recognition. NG CPNN can be employed in access control systems, international borders, smartphone technology, and many more.