Impact of resolution and image quality on video face analysis

Low-resolution face analysis suffers more significantly from quality degradations than high-resolution analysis. In this work, we will investigate how several face analysis steps are influenced by low image quality and how this relates to the low resolution. In the first step, a simulation of different effects on image quality, namely low resolution, compression artifacts, motion blur and noise is performed and the impact on face detection, registration and recognition is analyzed. Depending on the situation, it becomes obvious that the low resolution is sometimes a minor degrading effect, outmatched by a single one or a combination of the further effects. When addressing real-world face recognition from surveillance data, the combination of the challenging effects is the biggest problem because typical counter measures are individual to one single effect.