Facial Image Privacy Protection Based on Principal Components of Adversarial Segmented Image Blocks

The features in facial images, which are utilized for a variety of technological applications, pose a significant privacy concern for users. This paper proposes a method for protecting privacy in facial images based on the principal components of adversarial segmented image blocks. Generative adversarial network parameters are compressed by segmenting the facial images into blocks and extracting the principal components of the segmented image. The generator and discriminator in the generative adversarial network then generate images similar to the original facial images; the facial images generated by the generator, as-driven by the target recognition network, markedly different from the original facial images. As the generator, discriminator, and target recognition network compete with each other, minor perturbation is added to the principal components of the facial images to protect the users' privacy and prevent distinct face-related features of the images from being easily extracted. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms other similar methods in terms of generated image quality, operation speed, and target recognition network accuracy.