Ear Symmetry Evaluation on Selected Feature Extraction Algorithms in Ear Biometrics

The human ear has an intriguing shape and like most parts of the human body, bilateral symmetry is observed between left and right.  Occlusions of the ear is a major problem in ear recognition, however, if ear symmetry is established, then reconstructing partially occluded ear images will be possible from the other ear, also the left ear of an individual’s test image can be matched against the right ear in the gallery database (or vice-versa). This paper presented an evaluation of the relationship between left and right ear using four selected feature extraction algorithms: Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF), Geometric feature extraction and Gabor wavelet based feature extraction techniques in terms of performance issues given by of False Acceptance Rate (FAR), False Rejection Rate (FRR), and Genuine Acceptance Rate (GAR).The approach was evaluated on non-public ear dataset and simulated in MATLAB Environment. For these selected feature extraction algorithms, the right ears of the subjects are used as the gallery, and the left ear as the probe. The experimental results suggest the existence of some degree of symmetry in the human ears but the ear are not exactly identical as the recognition accuracy of the system declined for three (PCA, SURF, and Gabor wavelet) of the feature extraction algorithms, FRR rising to over 84% for SURF. However, Geometric feature extraction reported relatively high recognition accuracy with FRR of 12.50% and GAR of 87.50%. Keywords: Ear symmetry, Gabor wavelet, Occlusion, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF)

A Survey on Ear Biometrics

Recognizing people by their ear has recently received significant attention in the literature. Several reasons account for this trend: first, ear recognition does not suffer from some problems associated with other non contact biometrics, such as face recognition; second, it is the most promising candidate for combination with the face in the context of multi-pose face recognition; and third, the ear can be used for human recognition in surveillance videos where the face may be occluded completely or in part. Further, the ear appears to degrade little with age. Even though, current ear detection and recognition systems have reached a certain level of maturity, their success is limited to controlled indoor conditions. In addition to variation in illumination, other open research problems include hair occlusion; earprint forensics; ear symmetry; ear classification; and ear individuality. This paper provides a detailed survey of research conducted in ear detection and recognition. It provides an up-to-date review of the existing literature revealing the current state-of-art for not only those who are working in this area but also for those who might exploit this new approach. Furthermore, it offers insights into some unsolved ear recognition problems as well as ear databases available for researchers

Ear Detection and Localization with Convolutional Neural Networks in Natural Images and Videos.

[EN]The difficulty in precisely detecting and locating an ear within an image is the first step to tackle in an ear-based biometric recognition system, a challenge which increases in difficulty when working with variable photographic conditions. This is in part due to the irregular shapes of human ears, but also because of variable lighting conditions and the ever changing profile shape of an ear’s projection when photographed. An ear detection system involving multiple convolutional neural networks and a detection grouping algorithm is proposed to identify the presence and location of an ear in a given input image. The proposed method atches the performance of other methods when analyzed against clean and purpose-shot photographs, reaching an accuracy of upwards of 98%, but clearly outperforms them with a rate of over 86% when the system is subjected to non-cooperative natural images where the subject appears in challenging orientations and photographic conditions

De-identification for privacy protection in multimedia content : A survey

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Slobodan Ribaric, Aladdin Ariyaeeinia, and Nikola Pavesic, ‘De-identification for privacy protection in multimedia content: A survey’, Signal Processing: Image Communication, Vol. 47, pp. 131-151, September 2016, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.image.2016.05.020. This manuscript version is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License CC BY NC-ND 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.Privacy is one of the most important social and political issues in our information society, characterized by a growing range of enabling and supporting technologies and services. Amongst these are communications, multimedia, biometrics, big data, cloud computing, data mining, internet, social networks, and audio-video surveillance. Each of these can potentially provide the means for privacy intrusion. De-identification is one of the main approaches to privacy protection in multimedia contents (text, still images, audio and video sequences and their combinations). It is a process for concealing or removing personal identifiers, or replacing them by surrogate personal identifiers in personal information in order to prevent the disclosure and use of data for purposes unrelated to the purpose for which the information was originally obtained. Based on the proposed taxonomy inspired by the Safe Harbour approach, the personal identifiers, i.e., the personal identifiable information, are classified as non-biometric, physiological and behavioural biometric, and soft biometric identifiers. In order to protect the privacy of an individual, all of the above identifiers will have to be de-identified in multimedia content. This paper presents a review of the concepts of privacy and the linkage among privacy, privacy protection, and the methods and technologies designed specifically for privacy protection in multimedia contents. The study provides an overview of de-identification approaches for non-biometric identifiers (text, hairstyle, dressing style, license plates), as well as for the physiological (face, fingerprint, iris, ear), behavioural (voice, gait, gesture) and soft-biometric (body silhouette, gender, age, race, tattoo) identifiers in multimedia documents.Peer reviewe

Bioinformatics Applications Based On Machine Learning

The great advances in information technology (IT) have implications for many sectors, such as bioinformatics, and has considerably increased their possibilities. This book presents a collection of 11 original research papers, all of them related to the application of IT-related techniques within the bioinformatics sector: from new applications created from the adaptation and application of existing techniques to the creation of new methodologies to solve existing problems

Sistema biométrico para detección y reconocimiento de orejas basado en algoritmos de procesamiento de imágenes y redes neuronales profundas

[EN]The ear is an emerging biometric feature that has caught the attention of the scientific community for more than a decade. Its unique structure has stood out since long ago among forensic scientists, and has been used to identify suspects in many cases. The logical step towards a broader application of ear biometrics is to create a recognition system. To carry out this process, this work focuses on the use of data from images (2D). The present study mentions techniques like the Hausdorff distance, which adds robustness and increases the performance, filtering the subjects to use in the testing process. It also includes image ray transform (IRT) in the detection step. The ear is a fickle biometric feature when working with photographic images under varying conditions. This is largely due to the camera’s focus, the irregular shapes of the captures, the lighting conditions and the ever-changing shape of the projection when it is photographed. Therefore, to identify the presence and location of an ear in an image, we propose an ear detection system with multiple convolutional neural networks (CNN) and a clustering algorithm of detections. The proposed method coincides with the performance of other techniques when we analyze clean photographs, that is to say, catches in ideal conditions (purposeshot), reaching an accuracy of more than 98 %. When the system is subjected to natural images in real world conditions, where the subject appears in a multitude of orientations and photographic conditions in an uncontrolled environment, our system maintains the same precision, clearly exceeding the average result (83 %) obtained in previous researches. Finally, the algorithms used to complete the recognition steps are presented, using convolutional structures, extraction techniques and geometric approximations in order to increase the accuracy of the process.[ES]La oreja es un rasgo biométrico emergente que ha llamado la atención de la comunidad científica por más de una década. Su estructura única ha destacado desde hace mucho tiempo entre los científicos forenses, y se ha utilizado para la identificación de sospechosos en muchos casos. El paso lógico hacia una aplicación más amplia de la biometría de orejas es crear un sistema de reconocimiento. Este trabajo se centra en el uso de datos de imágenes (2D) para llevar a cabo dicho proceso. El presente estudio aborda técnicas como la distancia Hausdorff; la cual agrega robustez e incrementa el desempeño filtrando los sujetos a utilizar en la etapa de prueba del proceso. También incluye la transformación de imágenes con rayos (IRT) en la etapa de detección. La oreja es una característica biométrica inconstante cuando se trabaja con imágenes fotográficas en condiciones variables: esto se debe en gran parte al enfoque de la cámara, las formas irregulares de las capturas, las condiciones de iluminación y la forma siempre cambiante de la proyección cuando es fotografiada. Por tanto, para identificar la presencia y localización de una oreja en una imagen proponemos un sistema de detección de orejas con múltiples redes neuronales convolucionales (CNN) y un algoritmo de agrupación de detección. El método propuesto coincide con el rendimiento de otras técnicas cuando analizamos fotografías limpias, es decir, capturas en condiciones ideales (purposeshot), alcanzando una precisión de más del 98 %. Cuando el sistema está sujeto a imágenes naturales en condiciones del mundo real, donde el sujeto aparece en una multitud de orientaciones y condiciones fotográficas en ambiente no controlado, nuestro sistema mantiene la misma precisión superando claramente el resultado del 83 % promedio obtenido en investigaciones previas. Finalmente se exponen los algoritmos utilizados para completar los pasos del reconocimiento, utilizando estructuras convolucionales, técnicas de extracción de características y aproximaciones geométricas a fin de incrementar la presición del proceso