Fusion of visual, thermal, and range as a solution to illumination and pose restrictions in face recognition

This paper summarizes the various components of face recognition research conducted at the IRIS Lab. First, fusion of visual and thermal infrared (IR) images for robust face recognition is discussed. Two techniques are implemented: data fusion and decision fusion. With the knowledge that eyeglasses block the emission of thermal energy, an algorithm is designed to detect and replace eyeglasses with an eye template in thermal images. A commercial face recognition software (FaceIt®) is used in the evaluation of the various fusion algorithms. Comparison results show that fusion-based face recognition outperforms individual visual or thermal face recognizers under illumination variations and facial expressions. Efforts in the 3D arena are also described. Results of high resolution stereo-based 3D reconstruction of faces are shown and analyzed, in a first approach, then in a second approach, a warping technique is applied to overlay color and thermal textures on 3D mannequin head models, obtained using a laser range scanner.