P J. Phillips

Overview of the face recognition grand challenge

Over the last couple of years, face recognition researchers have been developing new techniques. These developments are being fueled by advances in computer vision techniques, computer design, sensor design, and interest in fielding face recognition systems. Such advances hold the promise of reducing the error rate in face recognition systems by an order of magnitude over Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) 2002 results. The face recognition grand challenge (FRGC) is designed to achieve this performance goal by presenting to researchers a six-experiment challenge problem along with data corpus of 50,000 images. The data consists of 3D scans and high resolution still imagery taken under controlled and uncontrolled conditions. This paper describes the challenge problem, data corpus, and presents baseline performance and preliminary results on natural statistics of facial imagery.

FRVT 2006 and ICE 2006 Large-Scale Experimental Results

This paper describes the large-scale experimental results from the Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) 2006 and the Iris Challenge Evaluation (ICE) 2006. The FRVT 2006 looked at recognition from high-resolution still frontal face images and 3D face images, and measured performance for still frontal face images taken under controlled and uncontrolled illumination. The ICE 2006 evaluation reported verification performance for both left and right irises. The images in the ICE 2006 intentionally represent a broader range of quality than the ICE 2006 sensor would normally acquire. This includes images that did not pass the quality control software embedded in the sensor. The FRVT 2006 results from controlled still and 3D images document at least an order-of-magnitude improvement in recognition performance over the FRVT 2002. The FRVT 2006 and the ICE 2006 compared recognition performance from high-resolution still frontal face images, 3D face images, and the single-iris images. On the FRVT 2006 and the ICE 2006 data sets, recognition performance was comparable for high-resolution frontal face, 3D face, and the iris images. In an experiment comparing human and algorithms on matching face identity across changes in illumination on frontal face images, the best performing algorithms were more accurate than humans on unfamiliar faces.

Face recognition vendor test 2002

Summary form only given. The face recognition vendor test (FRVT) 2002 is an independently administered technology evaluation of mature face recognition systems. FRVT 2002 provides performance measures for assessing the capability of face recognition systems to meet requirements for large-scale, real-world applications. Participation in FRVT 2002 was open to commercial and mature prototype systems from universities, research institutes, and companies. Ten companies submitted either commercial or prototype systems. FRVT 2002 computed performance statistics on an extremely large data set-121,589 operational facial images of 37,437 individuals. FRVT 2002 1) characterized identification and watch list performance as a function of database size, 2) estimated the variability in performance for different groups of people, 3) characterized performance as a function of elapsed time between enrolled and new images of a person, and 4) investigated the effect of demographics on performance. FRVT 2002 showed that recognition from indoor images has made substantial progress since FRVT 2000. Demographic results show that males are easier to recognize than females and that older people are easier to recognize than younger people. FRVT 2002 also assessed the impact of three new techniques for improving face recognition: three-dimensional morphable models, normalization of similarity scores, and face recognition from video sequences. Results show that three-dimensional morphable models and normalization increase performance and that face recognition from video sequences offers only a limited increase in performance over still images. A new XML-based evaluation protocol was developed for FRVT 2002. This protocol is flexible and supports evaluations of biometrics in general The FRVT 2002 reports can be found at http://www.frvt.org.

Face recognition based on frontal views generated from non-frontal images

This paper presents a method for face recognition across large changes in viewpoint. Our method is based on a morphable model of 3D faces that represents face-specific information extracted from a dataset of 3D scans. For non-frontal face recognition in 2D still images, the morphable model can be incorporated in two different approaches: in the first, it serves as a preprocessing step by estimating the 3D shape of novel faces from the non-frontal input images, and generating frontal views of the reconstructed faces at a standard illumination using 3D computer graphics. The transformed images are then fed into state-of-the-art face recognition systems that are optimized for frontal views. This method was shown to be extremely effective in the Face Recognition Vendor Test FRVT 2002. In the process of estimating the 3D shape of a face from an image, a set of model coefficients are estimated. In the second method, face recognition is performed directly from these coefficients. In this paper we explain the algorithm used to preprocess the images in FRVT 2002, present additional FRVT 2002 results, and compare these results to recognition from the model coefficients.

The gait identification challenge problem: data sets and baseline algorithm

Recognition of people through gait analysis is an important research topic, with potential applications in video surveillance, tracking, and monitoring. Recognizing the importance of evaluating and comparing possible competing solutions to this problem, we previously introduced the HumanID challenge problem consisting of a set of experiments of increasing difficulty, a baseline algorithm, and a large set of video sequences (about 300 GB of data related to 452 sequences from 74 subjects) acquired to investigate important dimensions to this problem, such as variations due to viewpoint, footwear and walking surface. In this paper we present a detailed investigation of the baseline algorithm, quantify the dependence of the various covariates on gait-based identification, and update the previous baseline performance with optimized ones. We establish that the performance of the baseline algorithm is robust with respect to its various parameters. The overall identification performance is also stable with respect to the quality of the silhouettes. We find that the approximately lower 20% of the silhouette accounts for most of the recognition achieved. Viewpoint has barely statistically significant effect on identification rates, whereas footwear and surface-type does have significant effects with the effect due to surface-type being approximately 5 times that of shoe-type.

Preliminary Face Recognition Grand Challenge Results

The goal of the face recognition grand challenge (FRGC) is to improve the performance of face recognition algorithms by an order of magnitude over the best results in face recognition vendor test (FRVT) 2002. The FRGC is designed to achieve this performance goal by presenting to researchers a six-experiment challenge problem along with a data corpus of 50,000 images. The data consists of 3D scans and high resolution still imagery taken under controlled and uncontrolled conditions. This paper presents preliminary results of the FRGC for all six experiments. The preliminary results indicate that significant progress has been made towards achieving the stated goals

The Iris Challenge Evaluation 2005

This paper describes the Iris Challenge Evaluation (ICE) 2005. The ICE 2005 contains a dataset of 2953 iris images from 132 subjects. The data is organized into two experiments: right and left eye. Iris recognition performance is presented for twelve algorithms from nine groups that participated in the ICE 2005. For the top performers, verification rate on the right iris is above 0.995 at a false accept rate of 0.001. For the left iris, the corresponding verification rates are between 0.990 and 0.995 at a false accept rate of 0.001. The results from the ICE 2005 challenge problem were the first to observe correlations between the right and left irises for match and non-match scores, and quality measures.

Distinguishing identical twins by face recognition

The paper measures the ability of face recognition algorithms to distinguish between identical twin siblings. The experimental dataset consists of images taken of 126 pairs of identical twins (252 people) collected on the same day and 24 pairs of identical twins (48 people) with images collected one year apart. In terms of both the number of paris of twins and lapsed time between acquisitions, this is the most extensive investigation of face recognition performance on twins to date. Recognition experiments are conducted using three of the top submissions to the Multiple Biometric Evaluation (MBE) 2010 Still Face Track [1]. Performance results are reported for both same day and cross year matching. Performance results are broken out by lighting conditions (studio and outside); expression (neutral and smiling); gender and age. Confidence intervals were generated by a bootstrap method. This is the most detailed covariate analysis of face recognition of twins to date.

How features of the human face affect recognition: a statistical comparison of three face recognition algorithms

Recognition difficulty is statistically linked to 11 subject covariate factors such as age and gender for three face recognition algorithms: principle components analysis, an interpersonal image difference classifier, and an elastic bunch graph matching algorithm. The covariates assess race, gender, age, glasses use, facial hair, bangs, mouth state, complexion, state of eyes, makeup use, and facial expression. We use two statistical models. First, an ANOVA relates covariates to normalized similarity scores. Second, logistic regression relates subject covariates to probability of rank one recognition. These models have strong explanatory power as measured by R/sup 2/ and deviance reduction, while providing complementary and corroborative results. Some factors, like changes to the eye status, affect all algorithms similarly. Other factors, such as race, affect different algorithms differently. Tabular and graphical summaries of results provide a wealth of empirical evidence. Plausible explanations of many results can be motivated from knowledge of the algorithms. Other results are surprising and suggest a need for further study.

Comments on the CASIA version 1.0 Iris Data Set

We note that the images in the CASIA version 1.0 iris data set have been edited so that the pupil area is replaced by a circular region of uniform intensity. We recommend that this data set no longer be used in iris biometrics research unless there is a compelling reason that takes into account the nature of the images. In addition, based on our experience with the iris challenge evaluation (ICE) 2005 technology development project, we make recommendations for reporting results of iris recognition experiments.