Hyeon Chang Lee

Gaze tracking system at a distance for controlling IPTV

Gaze tracking is used for detecting the position that a user is looking at. In this research, a new gaze-tracking system and method are proposed to control a large-screen TV at a distance. This research is novel in the following four ways as compared to previous work: First, this is the first system for gaze tracking on a large-screen TV at a distance. Second, in order to increase convenience, the users eye is captured by a remote gaze-tracking camera not requiring a user to wear any device. Third, without the complicated calibrations among the screen, the camera and the eye coordinates, the gaze position on the TV screen is obtained by using a simple 2D method based on a geometric transform with pupil center and four cornea specular reflections. Fourth, by using a near-infrared (NIR) passing filter on the camera and NIR illuminators, the pupil region becomes distinctive in the input image irrespective of the change in the environmental visible light. Experimental results showed that the proposed system could be used as a new interface for controlling a TV with a 60-inch-wide screen (16:9).

Fake finger-vein image detection based on Fourier and wavelet transforms

Recently, finger-vein recognition has received considerable attention. It is widely used in many applications because of its numerous advantages, such as the small capture device, high accuracy, and user convenience. Nevertheless, finger-vein recognition faces a number of challenges. One critical issue is the use of fake finger-vein images to carry out system attacks. To overcome this problem, we propose a new fake finger-vein image-detection method based on the analysis of finger-vein images in both the frequency and spatial domains. This research is novel in five key ways. First, very little research has been conducted to date on fake finger-vein image detection. We construct a variety of fake finger-vein images, printed on A4 paper, matte paper, and overhead projector film, with which we evaluate the performance of our system. Second, because our proposed method is based on a single captured image, rather than a series of successive images, the processing time is short, no additional image alignment is required, and it is very convenient for users. Third, our proposed method is software-based, and can thus be easily implemented in various finger-vein recognition systems without special hardware. Fourth, Fourier transform features in the frequency domain are used for the detection of fake finger-vein images; further, both spatial and frequency characteristics from Haar and Daubechies wavelet transforms are used for fake finger-vein image detection. Fifth, the detection accuracy of fake finger-vein images is enhanced by combining the features of the Fourier transform and Haar and Daubechies wavelet transforms based on support vector machines. Experimental results indicate that the equal error rate of fake finger-vein image detection with our proposed method is lower than that with a Fourier transform, wavelet transform, or other fusion methods.

Finger vein recognition using weighted local binary pattern code based on a support vector machine

Finger vein recognition is a biometric technique which identifies individuals using their unique finger vein patterns. It is reported to have a high accuracy and rapid processing speed. In addition, it is impossible to steal a vein pattern located inside the finger. We propose a new identification method of finger vascular patterns using a weighted local binary pattern (LBP) and support vector machine (SVM). This research is novel in the following three ways. First, holistic codes are extracted through the LBP method without using a vein detection procedure. This reduces the processing time and the complexities in detecting finger vein patterns. Second, we classify the local areas from which the LBP codes are extracted into three categories based on the SVM classifier: local areas that include a large amount (LA), a medium amount (MA), and a small amount (SA) of vein patterns. Third, different weights are assigned to the extracted LBP code according to the local area type (LA, MA, and SA) from which the LBP codes were extracted. The optimal weights are determined empirically in terms of the accuracy of the finger vein recognition. Experimental results show that our equal error rate (EER) is significantly lower compared to that without the proposed method or using a conventional method.

Robust Pedestrian Detection by Combining Visible and Thermal Infrared Cameras

With the development of intelligent surveillance systems, the need for accurate detection of pedestrians by cameras has increased. However, most of the previous studies use a single camera system, either a visible light or thermal camera, and their performances are affected by various factors such as shadow, illumination change, occlusion, and higher background temperatures. To overcome these problems, we propose a new method of detecting pedestrians using a dual camera system that combines visible light and thermal cameras, which are robust in various outdoor environments such as mornings, afternoons, night and rainy days. Our research is novel, compared to previous works, in the following four ways: First, we implement the dual camera system where the axes of visible light and thermal cameras are parallel in the horizontal direction. We obtain a geometric transform matrix that represents the relationship between these two camera axes. Second, two background images for visible light and thermal cameras are adaptively updated based on the pixel difference between an input thermal and pre-stored thermal background images. Third, by background subtraction of thermal image considering the temperature characteristics of background and size filtering with morphological operation, the candidates from whole image (CWI) in the thermal image is obtained. The positions of CWI (obtained by background subtraction and the procedures of shadow removal, morphological operation, size filtering, and filtering of the ratio of height to width) in the visible light image are projected on those in the thermal image by using the geometric transform matrix, and the searching regions for pedestrians are defined in the thermal image. Fourth, within these searching regions, the candidates from the searching image region (CSI) of pedestrians in the thermal image are detected. The final areas of pedestrians are located by combining the detected positions of the CWI and CSI of the thermal image based on OR operation. Experimental results showed that the average precision and recall of detecting pedestrians are 98.13% and 88.98%, respectively.

A Multimodal Biometric Recognition of Touched Fingerprint and Finger-Vein

multimodal biometric systems have been widely used to overcome the limitation of unimodal biometric systems and to achieve high recognition accuracy. However, users feel inconvenience because most of the multimodal systems require several steps in order to acquire multimodal biometric data, which also requires the specific behaviors of users. In this research, we propose a new multimodal biometric recognition of touched fingerprint and finger-vein. This paper is novel in the following four ways. First, we can get a fingerprint and a finger-vein image at the same time by the proposed device, which acquires the fingerprint and finger-vein images from the first and second knuckles of finger, respectively. Second, the devices size is so small that we can adopt it on a mobile device, easily. Third, fingerprint recognition is done based on the minutia points of ridge area and finger-vein recognition is performed based on local binary pattern (LBP) with appearance information of finger area. Fourth, based on decision level fusion, we combined two results of fingerprint and finger-vein recognition. Experimental results confirmed the efficiency and usefulness of the proposed method.

Remote Gaze Tracking System on a Large Display

We propose a new remote gaze tracking system as an intelligent TV interface. Our research is novel in the following three ways: first, because a user can sit at various positions in front of a large display, the capture volume of the gaze tracking system should be greater, so the proposed system includes two cameras which can be moved simultaneously by panning and tilting mechanisms, a wide view camera (WVC) for detecting eye position and an auto-focusing narrow view camera (NVC) for capturing enlarged eye images. Second, in order to remove the complicated calibration between the WVC and NVC and to enhance the capture speed of the NVC, these two cameras are combined in a parallel structure. Third, the auto-focusing of the NVC is achieved on the basis of both the users facial width in the WVC image and a focus score calculated on the eye image of the NVC. Experimental results showed that the proposed system can be operated with a gaze tracking accuracy of ±0.737°∼±0.775° and a speed of 5∼10 frames/s.

Enhancement of Finger-Vein Image by Vein Line Tracking and Adaptive Gabor Filtering for Finger-Vein Recognition

Biometrics is the technology to identify a user by using the physiological or behavioral characteristics. Among the biometrics such as fingerprint, face, iris, and speaker recognition, finger-vein recognition has been widely used in various applications such as door access control, financial security, and user authentication of personal computer, due to its advantages such as small sized and low cost device, and difficulty of making fake vein image. Generally, a finger-vein system uses near-infrared (NIR) light illuminator and camera to acquire finger-vein images. However, it is difficult to obtain distinctive and clear finger-vein image due to skin scattering of illumination since the finger-vein exists inside of a finger. To solve these problems, we propose a new method of enhancing the quality of finger-vein image. This research is novel in the following three ways compared to previous works. First, the finger-vein lines of an input image are discriminated from the skin area by using local binarization, morphological operation, thinning and line tracing. Second, the direction of vein line is estimated based on the discriminated finger-vein line. And the thickness of finger-vein in an image is also estimated by considering both the discriminated finger-vein line and the corresponding position of finger-vein region in an original image. Third, the distinctiveness of finger-vein region in the original image is enhanced by applying an adaptive Gabor filter optimized to the measured direction and thickness of finger-vein area. Experimental results showed that the distinctiveness and consequent quality of finger-vein image are enhanced compared to that without the proposed method.

A New Mobile Multimodal Biometric Device Integrating Finger Vein and Fingerprint Recognition

Mobile multimodal biometric systems have been recently used to overcome the limitations of unimodal biometric systems and to achieve high recognition accuracy. However, the conventional embedded mobile biometric systems have low processing power and small storage so they are insufficient for processing many biometric data. In addition, user feels inconvenience because they capture biometric data in several steps, which requires specific behaviors of the user. Therefore, we propose a new mobile multimodal biometric system based on the fusion of finger vein and fingerprint recognition. The recognition step can be completed within short time because the proposed system obtains finger vein and fingerprint images simultaneously. In addition, the proposed system has enough processing power and storage for many biometric data by using a conventional ultra mobile personal computer (UMPC) as an embedded system. Keywords-component; multimodal biometrics, finger vein, fingerprint

Robust Eye and Pupil Detection Method for Gaze Tracking

Robust and accurate pupil detection is a prerequisite for gaze detection. Hence, we propose a new eye/pupil detection method for gaze detection on a large display. The novelty of our research can be summarized by the following four points. First, in order to overcome the performance limitations of conventional methods of eye detection, such as adaptive boosting (Adaboost) and continuously adaptive mean shift (CAMShift) algorithms, we propose adaptive selection of the Adaboost and CAMShift methods. Second, this adaptive selection is based on two parameters: pixel differences in successive images and matching values determined by CAMShift. Third, a support vector machine (SVM)-based classifier is used with these two parameters as the input, which improves the eye detection performance. Fourth, the center of the pupil within the detected eye region is accurately located by means of circular edge detection, binarization and calculation of the geometric center. The experimental results show that the proposed method can detect the center of the pupil at a speed of approximately 19.4 frames/s with an RMS error of approximately 5.75 pixels, which is superior to the performance of conventional detection methods.

Compensation Method of Natural Head Movement for Gaze Tracking System Using an Ultrasonic Sensor for Distance Measurement.

Most gaze tracking systems are based on the pupil center corneal reflection (PCCR) method using near infrared (NIR) illuminators. One advantage of the PCCR method is the high accuracy it achieves in gaze tracking because it compensates for the pupil center position based on the relative position of corneal specular reflection (SR). However, the PCCR method only works for user head movements within a limited range, and its performance is degraded by the natural movement of the user’s head. To overcome this problem, we propose a gaze tracking method using an ultrasonic sensor that is robust to the natural head movement of users. Experimental results demonstrate that with our compensation method the gaze tracking system is more robust to natural head movements compared to other systems without our method and commercial systems.