Optimized Visual and Thermal Image Fusion for Efficient Face Recognition

Data fusion of thermal and visual images is a solution to overcome the drawbacks present in individual thermal and visual images. Data fusion using different approach is discussed and results are presented in this paper. Traditional fusion approaches don´t produce useful results for face recognition. An optimized approach for face data fusion is developed which works for face data fusion equally well as for non-face images. This paper presents the implementation of human face recognition system using proposed optimized data fusion of visual and thermal images. Gabor filtering technique, which extracts facial features, is used as a face recognition technique to test the effectiveness of the fusion techniques. It has been found that by using the proposed fusion technique Gabor filter can recognize face even with variable expressions and light intensities