IR and visible light face recognition

This paper presents the results of several large-scale studies of face recognition employing visible-light and infrared (IR) imagery in the context of principal component analysis. We find that in a scenario involving time lapse between gallery and probe, and relatively controlled lighting, (1) PCA-based recognition using visible-light images outperforms PCA-based recognition using infrared images, (2) the combination of PCA-based recognition using visible-light and infrared imagery substantially outperforms either one individually. In a same-session scenario (i.e., near-simultaneous acquisition of gallery and probe images) neither modality is significantly better than the other. These experimental results reinforce prior research that employed a smaller data set, presenting a convincing argument that, even across a broad experimental spectrum, the behaviors enumerated above are valid and consistent.