1,521 research outputs found
Development of CUiris: A Dark-Skinned African Iris Dataset for Enhancement of Image Analysis and Robust Personal Recognition
Iris recognition algorithms, especially with the
emergence of large-scale iris-based identification systems, must
be tested for speed and accuracy and evaluated with a wide
range of templates – large size, long-range, visible and different
origins. This paper presents the acquisition of eye-iris images
of dark-skinned subjects in Africa, a predominant case of verydark-
brown iris images, under near-infrared illumination. The
peculiarity of these iris images is highlighted from the
histogram and normal probability distribution of their
grayscale image entropy (GiE) values, in comparison to Asian
and Caucasian iris images. The acquisition of eye-images for
the African iris dataset is ongoing and will be made publiclyavailable
as soon as it is sufficiently populated
Infrared face recognition: a comprehensive review of methodologies and databases
Automatic face recognition is an area with immense practical potential which
includes a wide range of commercial and law enforcement applications. Hence it
is unsurprising that it continues to be one of the most active research areas
of computer vision. Even after over three decades of intense research, the
state-of-the-art in face recognition continues to improve, benefitting from
advances in a range of different research fields such as image processing,
pattern recognition, computer graphics, and physiology. Systems based on
visible spectrum images, the most researched face recognition modality, have
reached a significant level of maturity with some practical success. However,
they continue to face challenges in the presence of illumination, pose and
expression changes, as well as facial disguises, all of which can significantly
decrease recognition accuracy. Amongst various approaches which have been
proposed in an attempt to overcome these limitations, the use of infrared (IR)
imaging has emerged as a particularly promising research direction. This paper
presents a comprehensive and timely review of the literature on this subject.
Our key contributions are: (i) a summary of the inherent properties of infrared
imaging which makes this modality promising in the context of face recognition,
(ii) a systematic review of the most influential approaches, with a focus on
emerging common trends as well as key differences between alternative
methodologies, (iii) a description of the main databases of infrared facial
images available to the researcher, and lastly (iv) a discussion of the most
promising avenues for future research.Comment: Pattern Recognition, 2014. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap
with arXiv:1306.160
Iris Recognition: Robust Processing, Synthesis, Performance Evaluation and Applications
The popularity of iris biometric has grown considerably over the past few years. It has resulted in the development of a large number of new iris processing and encoding algorithms. In this dissertation, we will discuss the following aspects of the iris recognition problem: iris image acquisition, iris quality, iris segmentation, iris encoding, performance enhancement and two novel applications.;The specific claimed novelties of this dissertation include: (1) a method to generate a large scale realistic database of iris images; (2) a crosspectral iris matching method for comparison of images in color range against images in Near-Infrared (NIR) range; (3) a method to evaluate iris image and video quality; (4) a robust quality-based iris segmentation method; (5) several approaches to enhance recognition performance and security of traditional iris encoding techniques; (6) a method to increase iris capture volume for acquisition of iris on the move from a distance and (7) a method to improve performance of biometric systems due to available soft data in the form of links and connections in a relevant social network
A Survey of Super-Resolution in Iris Biometrics With Evaluation of Dictionary-Learning
© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other worksThe lack of resolution has a negative impact on the performance of image-based biometrics. While many generic super-resolution methods have been proposed to restore low-resolution images, they usually aim to enhance their visual appearance. However, an overall visual enhancement of biometric images does not necessarily correlate with a better recognition performance. Reconstruction approaches thus need to incorporate the specific information from the target biometric modality to effectively improve recognition performance. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of iris super-resolution approaches proposed in the literature. We have also adapted an eigen-patches’ reconstruction method based on the principal component analysis eigen-transformation of local image patches. The structure of the iris is exploited by building a patch-position-dependent dictionary. In addition, image patches are restored separately, having their own reconstruction weights. This allows the solution to be locally optimized, helping to preserve local information. To evaluate the algorithm, we degraded the high-resolution images from the CASIA Interval V3 database. Different restorations were considered, with 15 × 15 pixels being the smallest resolution evaluated. To the best of our knowledge, this is the smallest resolutions employed in the literature. The experimental framework is complemented with six publicly available iris comparators that were used to carry out biometric verification and identification experiments. The experimental results show that the proposed method significantly outperforms both the bilinear and bicubic interpolations at a very low resolution. The performance of a number of comparators attains an impressive equal error rate as low as 5% and a Top-1 accuracy of 77%–84% when considering the iris images of only 15 × 15 pixels. These results clearly demonstrate the benefit of using trained super-resolution techniques to improve the quality of iris images prior to matchingThis work was supported by the EU COST Action under Grant IC1106. The work of F. Alonso-Fernandez and J. Bigun was supported in part by the Swedish Research Council, in part by the Swedish Innovation Agency, and in part by the Swedish Knowledge Foundation through the CAISR/SIDUS-AIR projects. The work of J. Fierrez was supported by the Spanish MINECO/FEDER through the CogniMetrics Project under Grant TEC2015-70627-R. The authors acknowledge the Halmstad University Library for its support with the open access fee
Improving Iris Recognition through Quality and Interoperability Metrics
The ability to identify individuals based on their iris is known as iris recognition. Over the past decade iris recognition has garnered much attention because of its strong performance in comparison with other mainstream biometrics such as fingerprint and face recognition. Performance of iris recognition systems is driven by application scenario requirements. Standoff distance, subject cooperation, underlying optics, and illumination are a few examples of these requirements which dictate the nature of images an iris recognition system has to process. Traditional iris recognition systems, dubbed stop and stare , operate under highly constrained conditions. This ensures that the captured image is of sufficient quality so that the success of subsequent processing stages, segmentation, encoding, and matching are not compromised. When acquisition constraints are relaxed, such as for surveillance or iris on the move, the fidelity of subsequent processing steps lessens.;In this dissertation we propose a multi-faceted framework for mitigating the difficulties associated with non-ideal iris. We develop and investigate a comprehensive iris image quality metric that is predictive of iris matching performance. The metric is composed of photometric measures such as defocus, motion blur, and illumination, but also contains domain specific measures such as occlusion, and gaze angle. These measures are then combined through a fusion rule based on Dempster-Shafer theory. Related to iris segmentation, which is arguably one of the most important tasks in iris recognition, we develop metrics which are used to evaluate the precision of the pupil and iris boundaries. Furthermore, we illustrate three methods which take advantage of the proposed segmentation metrics for rectifying incorrect segmentation boundaries. Finally, we look at the issue of iris image interoperability and demonstrate that techniques from the field of hardware fingerprinting can be utilized to improve iris matching performance when images captured from distinct sensors are involved
Proof-of-Concept
Biometry is an area in great expansion and is considered as possible solution to cases where high
authentication parameters are required. Although this area is quite advanced in theoretical
terms, using it in practical terms still carries some problems. The systems available still depend
on a high cooperation level to achieve acceptable performance levels, which was the backdrop
to the development of the following project. By studying the state of the art, we propose the
creation of a new and less cooperative biometric system that reaches acceptable performance
levels.A constante necessidade de parâmetros mais elevados de segurança, nomeadamente ao nível
de autenticação, leva ao estudo biometria como possível solução. Actualmente os mecanismos
existentes nesta área tem por base o conhecimento de algo que se sabe ”password” ou algo
que se possui ”codigo Pin”. Contudo este tipo de informação é facilmente corrompida ou contornada.
Desta forma a biometria é vista como uma solução mais robusta, pois garante que a
autenticação seja feita com base em medidas físicas ou compartimentais que definem algo que
a pessoa é ou faz (”who you are” ou ”what you do”).
Sendo a biometria uma solução bastante promissora na autenticação de indivíduos, é cada vez
mais comum o aparecimento de novos sistemas biométricos. Estes sistemas recorrem a medidas
físicas ou comportamentais, de forma a possibilitar uma autenticação (reconhecimento) com
um grau de certeza bastante considerável. O reconhecimento com base no movimento do corpo
humano (gait), feições da face ou padrões estruturais da íris, são alguns exemplos de fontes
de informação em que os sistemas actuais se podem basear. Contudo, e apesar de provarem
um bom desempenho no papel de agentes de reconhecimento autónomo, ainda estão muito
dependentes a nível de cooperação exigida. Tendo isto em conta, e tudo o que já existe no
ramo do reconhecimento biometrico, esta área está a dar passos no sentido de tornar os seus
métodos o menos cooperativos poss??veis. Possibilitando deste modo alargar os seus objectivos
para além da mera autenticação em ambientes controlados, para casos de vigilância e controlo
em ambientes não cooperativos (e.g. motins, assaltos, aeroportos).
É nesta perspectiva que o seguinte projecto surge. Através do estudo do estado da arte, pretende
provar que é possível criar um sistema capaz de agir perante ambientes menos cooperativos,
sendo capaz de detectar e reconhecer uma pessoa que se apresente ao seu alcance.O
sistema proposto PAIRS (Periocular and Iris Recognition Systema) tal como nome indica, efectua
o reconhecimento através de informação extraída da íris e da região periocular (região circundante
aos olhos). O sistema é construído com base em quatro etapas: captura de dados,
pré-processamento, extração de características e reconhecimento. Na etapa de captura de
dados, foi montado um dispositivo de aquisição de imagens com alta resolução com a capacidade
de capturar no espectro NIR (Near-Infra-Red). A captura de imagens neste espectro tem
como principal linha de conta, o favorecimento do reconhecimento através da íris, visto que
a captura de imagens sobre o espectro visível seria mais sensível a variações da luz ambiente.
Posteriormente a etapa de pré-processamento implementada, incorpora todos os módulos do
sistema responsáveis pela detecção do utilizador, avaliação de qualidade de imagem e segmentação
da íris. O modulo de detecção é responsável pelo desencadear de todo o processo, uma
vez que esta é responsável pela verificação da exist?ncia de um pessoa em cena. Verificada
a sua exist?ncia, são localizadas as regiões de interesse correspondentes ? íris e ao periocular,
sendo também verificada a qualidade com que estas foram adquiridas. Concluídas estas
etapas, a íris do olho esquerdo é segmentada e normalizada. Posteriormente e com base em
vários descritores, é extraída a informação biométrica das regiões de interesse encontradas,
e é criado um vector de características biométricas. Por fim, é efectuada a comparação dos
dados biometricos recolhidos, com os já armazenados na base de dados, possibilitando a criação
de uma lista com os níveis de semelhança em termos biometricos, obtendo assim um resposta
final do sistema. Concluída a implementação do sistema, foi adquirido um conjunto de imagens capturadas através do sistema implementado, com a participação de um grupo de voluntários.
Este conjunto de imagens permitiu efectuar alguns testes de desempenho, verificar e afinar
alguns parâmetros, e proceder a optimização das componentes de extração de características e
reconhecimento do sistema. Analisados os resultados foi possível provar que o sistema proposto
tem a capacidade de exercer as suas funções perante condições menos cooperativas
Techniques for Ocular Biometric Recognition Under Non-ideal Conditions
The use of the ocular region as a biometric cue has gained considerable traction due to recent advances in automated iris recognition. However, a multitude of factors can negatively impact ocular recognition performance under unconstrained conditions (e.g., non-uniform illumination, occlusions, motion blur, image resolution, etc.). This dissertation develops techniques to perform iris and ocular recognition under challenging conditions. The first contribution is an image-level fusion scheme to improve iris recognition performance in low-resolution videos. Information fusion is facilitated by the use of Principal Components Transform (PCT), thereby requiring modest computational efforts. The proposed approach provides improved recognition accuracy when low-resolution iris images are compared against high-resolution iris images. The second contribution is a study demonstrating the effectiveness of the ocular region in improving face recognition under plastic surgery. A score-level fusion approach that combines information from the face and ocular regions is proposed. The proposed approach, unlike other previous methods in this application, is not learning-based, and has modest computational requirements while resulting in better recognition performance. The third contribution is a study on matching ocular regions extracted from RGB face images against that of near-infrared iris images. Face and iris images are typically acquired using sensors operating in visible and near-infrared wavelengths of light, respectively. To this end, a sparse representation approach which generates a joint dictionary from corresponding pairs of face and iris images is designed. The proposed joint dictionary approach is observed to outperform classical ocular recognition techniques. In summary, the techniques presented in this dissertation can be used to improve iris and ocular recognition in practical, unconstrained environments
On Acquisition and Analysis of a Dataset Comprising of Gait, Ear and Semantic data
In outdoor scenarios such as surveillance where there is very little control over the environments, complex computer vision algorithms are often required for analysis. However constrained environments, such as walkways in airports where the surroundings and the path taken by individuals can be controlled, provide an ideal application for such systems. Figure 1.1 depicts an idealised constrained environment. The path taken by the subject is restricted to a narrow path and once inside is in a volume where lighting and other conditions are controlled to facilitate biometric analysis. The ability to control the surroundings and the flow of people greatly simplifes the computer vision task, compared to typical unconstrained environments. Even though biometric datasets with greater than one hundred people are increasingly common, there is still very little known about the inter and intra-subject variation in many biometrics. This information is essential to estimate the recognition capability and limits of automatic recognition systems. In order to accurately estimate the inter- and the intra- class variance, substantially larger datasets are required [40]. Covariates such as facial expression, headwear, footwear type, surface type and carried items are attracting increasing attention; although considering the potentially large impact on an individuals biometrics, large trials need to be conducted to establish how much variance results. This chapter is the first description of the multibiometric data acquired using the University of Southampton's Multi-Biometric Tunnel [26, 37]; a biometric portal using automatic gait, face and ear recognition for identification purposes. The tunnel provides a constrained environment and is ideal for use in high throughput security scenarios and for the collection of large datasets. We describe the current state of data acquisition of face, gait, ear, and semantic data and present early results showing the quality and range of data that has been collected. The main novelties of this dataset in comparison with other multi-biometric datasets are: 1. gait data exists for multiple views and is synchronised, allowing 3D reconstruction and analysis; 2. the face data is a sequence of images allowing for face recognition in video; 3. the ear data is acquired in a relatively unconstrained environment, as a subject walks past; and 4. the semantic data is considerably more extensive than has been available previously. We shall aim to show the advantages of this new data in biometric analysis, though the scope for such analysis is considerably greater than time and space allows for here
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