FACE RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY
Abstract—Face is an important part of who
we are and how people identify us. It is
arguably a person's most unique physical
characteristic. While humans have had the
innate ability to recognize and distinguish
different faces for millions of years,
computers are just now catching up Machine
recognition of human faces from still or video
images has attracted a great deal of attention
in the psychology, image processing, pattern
recognition, neural science, computer
security, and computer vision communities.
Face recognition is probably one of the most
non-intrusive and user-friendly biometric
authentication methods currently available; a
screensaver equipped with face recognition
technology can automatically unlock the
screen whenever the authorized user
approaches the computer. A facial recognition
software can pick someone's face out of a
crowd, extract that face from the rest of the
scene and compare it to a database full of
stored images. In order for this software to
work, it has to know what a basic face looks
like. Facial recognition software is designed to
pinpoint a face and measure its features. Each
face has certain distinguishable landmarks,
which make up the different facial features.
These landmarks are referred to as nodal
points. There are about 80 nodal points on a
human face. These nodal points are measured
to create a numerical code, a string of
numbers that represents the face in a
database. This code is called a face print. Only
14 to 22 nodal points are needed for the
software to complete the recognition process.
Facial recognition methods generally involve
a series of steps that serve to capture, analyze
and compare a face to a database of stored
images. The basic processes used by the
software system to capture and compare
images are: Detection, Alignment,
Normalization, Representation and Matching.
The technology is now creating waves in
image processing, pattern recognition, neural
science, computer security, and computer
vision communities.
I INTODUCTION
Face is an important part of who we are and how
people identify us. It is arguably a person's most
unique physical characteristic. While humans
have had the innate ability to recognize and
distinguish different faces for millions of years,
computers are just now catching up. Machine
recognition of human faces from still or video
images has attracted a great deal of attention in
the psychology, image processing, pattern
recognition, neural science, computer security,
and computer vision communities. Face
recognition is probably one of the most non-
intrusive and user-friendly biometric
authentication methods currently available. The
detail of how it works and why it is used is
discussed in this paper.
II WORKING PRINCIPLE OF FACE
RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY:
A company based in Minnesota, is one of many
developers of facial recognition technology. Its
software, Face can pick someone's face out of a
crowd, extract the face from the rest of the scene
and compare it to a database of stored images.
III WORKING PRINCIPLE-FLOWCHART:
Input Face
Image.
Face feature
extraction
Face
Databas Feature Decision
e. matching. maker.
Output
result.
IV WORKING OF FACE RECOGNITION
SOFTWARE:
The software involves two working components:
the preprocessing component and
The actual procedure.

Preprocessing involves:
Segmentation-where in the background of the
subject is eliminated.
Scaling-The image of the subject extracted from
the surroundings is scaled in order to mark and
process. The performance decreases if the scale
is misjudged.
Rotation-The symmetry operator is used to
estimate head orientation. Thus the tilt position
of the head is altered to obtain a rather straight
image.
Procedure:
A face recognition system can pick someone's
face out of a crowd, extract that face from the
rest of the scene and compare it to a database full
of stored images. In order for this software to
work, it has to know what a basic face looks like.
Facial recognition software is designed to
pinpoint a face and measure its features. Each
face has certain distinguishable landmarks,
which make up the different facial features.
These landmarks are referred to as nodal points.
There are about 80 nodal points on a human face.
Here are a few of the nodal points that are
measured by the software:
Distance between eyes
“Width of nose
“Depth of eye sockets
" Cheekbones
" Jaw line
" Chin
These nodal points are measured to create a
numerical code, a string of numbers that
represents the face in a database. This code is
called a face print. Only 14 to 22 nodal points
are needed for the Facet software to complete the
recognition process.
Facial recognition methods generally involve a
series of steps that serve to capture, analyze and
compare a face to a database of stored images.
The basic processes used by the Face It system
to capture and compare images are:
Detection - When the system is attached to a
video surveillance system, the recognition
software searches the field of view of a video
camera for faces. If there is a face in the view, it
is detected within a fraction of a second. A
multi-scale algorithm is used to search for faces
in low resolution. The system switches to a high-
resolution search only after a head-like shape is
detected.
Alignment- Once a face is detected, the system
determines the head's position, size and pose. A
face needs to be turned at least 35 degrees
toward the camera for the system to register it.
Normalization -The image of the head is scaled
and rotated so that it can be registered and
mapped into an appropriate size and pose.
Normalization is performed regardless of the
head's location and distance from the camera.
Light does not impact the normalization process.
Representation - The system translates the facial
data into a unique code. This coding process
allows for easier comparison of the newly
acquired facial data to stored facial data.
Matching - The newly acquired facial data is
compared to the stored data and (ideally) linked
to at least one stored facial representation.
In most instances the images were not taken in a
controlled environment. Even the smallest
changes in light or orientation could reduce the
effectiveness of the system, so they couldn't be
matched to any face in the database, leading to a
high rate of failure.
V THE RECOGNITION TECH INVOLVES
THREE MATCHING METHODS:
Feature based matching: Interesting feature
points in the face image are located by Gabon
filters, which gives us an automatic system that
is notdependent on accurate detection of facial
features. The feature points are typically located
at positions with high information content (such
as facial features), and at each of these positions
we extract a feature vector consisting of Gabor
coefficients. We report some initial results on the
ORL dataset. This system belongs to a category
that uses the same approach for feature
description as most other “local features” system
do, namely Gabor coefficients.The main
advantage with our approach is that it is
automatic. Since we find all local features
automatically, and make no demand on the
features extracted to be pre determined facial
features (such as eyes/nose/mouth), we also
claim to have a robust strategy. By this we mean
that we do not base our system on locating
specific facial features, we base our system on
locating feature points in the face images which
contain interesting information. These are
usually located around facial features. Our
approach is also easily extendible to face
recognition in video sequences and situation
where the training data is of varying quality and
quantity.
Holistic: This is one of the most successful and
well studied techniques. The technique involves
representing an image of N pixels by a vector
N*1 in an N-dimensional space. Dimensionality
reduction techniques are then used to scale down
the image. A set of transformation vectors
(displayed as feature images), put them into W
of size N*d which is the defining the face
subspace
The face images are projected onto the “face
subspace” The central idea is to find a weighted
combination of a small number of
transformations vectors that can approximate any
face in the face database called Eigenfaces. A
new image is recognized using a nearest
neighbor classifier in an Eigenface subspace.
Classify a new face as the person with the closest
distance. The advantages of this system are:
�Recognition accuracy increases
� Run-time performance is very good
� Construction: computationally intense, but
need to be done infrequently
� Fair robustness to facial distortions, pose and
lighting conditions
� Need to rebuild the eigenspace if adding a
new person
� Start to break down when there are too many
classes
� Retains unwanted variations due to lighting
and facial expression
Hybrid: A hybrid face recognition method
combines both holistic and feature analysis based
approaches using a Markov random field (MRF)
model. The face images are divided into small
patches, and the MRF model is used to represent
the relationship between the image patches and
the patch ID's. The MRF model is first learned
from the training image patches, given a test
image. The most probable patch ID's are then
inferred using the belief propagation (BP)
algorithm. Finally, the ID of the test image is
determined by a voting scheme from the
estimated patch ID's. Experimental results on
several face datasets indicate the significant
potential of this method
VI WHY FACE RECOGNITION IS USED?
In addition to being used for security systems,
authorities have found a number of other
applications for facial recognition systems. At
Super Bowl XXXV in January 2001, police in
Tampa Bay, Florida, used Dentin’s facial
recognition software, FaceIt, to search for
potential criminals and terrorists in attendance at
the event. (it found 19 people with pending arrest
warrants) In the 2000 presidential election, the
Mexican government employed facial
recognition software to prevent voter fraud.
Some individuals had been registering to vote
under several different names, in an attempt to
place multiple votes. By comparing new facial
images to those already in the voter database,
authorities were able to reduce duplicate
registrations. Similar technologies are being used
in the United States to prevent people from
obtaining fake identification cards and driver’s
licenses. There are also a number of potential
uses for facial recognition that are currently
being developed. For example, the technology
could be used as a security measure at ATM’s;
instead of using a bank card or personal
identification number, the ATM would capture
an image of your face, and compare it to your
photo in the bank database to confirm your
identity. This same concept could also be applied
to computers; by using a webcam to capture a
digital image of yourself, your face could replace
your password as a means to log-in.
VII SHORTCOMINGS:
Face recognition is not perfect and struggles to
perform under certain conditions. Conditions
where face recognition does not work well
include poor lighting, sunglasses, long hair, or
other objects partially covering the subject’s
face, and low resolution images.
Another serious drawback is that many systems
are less effective if facial expressions vary. Even
a big smile can render in the system less
effectively.
Despite the potential benefits of this technology,
many citizens are concerned that their privacy
will be invaded. Some fear that it could lead to a
“total surveillance society,” with the government
and other authorities having the ability to know
where you are, and what you are doing, at all
times.
VIII OVERCOMING PROBLEMS:
In 2006, the performance of the ‘latest face
recognition algorithms’ were evaluated in the
Face Recognition Grand Challenge. High-
resolution face images, 3-D face scans, and iris
images were used in the tests. The results
indicated that the new algorithms are 10 times
more accurate than the face recognition
algorithms of 2002 and 100 times more accurate
than those of 1995. Some of the algorithms were
able to outperform human participants in
recognizing faces and could uniquely identify
identical twins.
Another emerging trend uses the visual details of
the skin, as captured in standard digital or
scanned images. This technique, called skin
texture analysis, turns the unique lines, patterns,
and spots apparent in a person’s skin into a
mathematical space. Tests have shown that with
the addition of skin texture analysis,
performance in recognizing faces can increase 20
to 25 percent.
IX PRESENT DEVELOPMENTS:
 Face Recognition Technology is now
considered for use in retails and stores
in order to facilitate a secure and
independent shopping system.
 It is being widely incorporated in
computer systems, mobile phones and
other communication devices in order to
allow the user alone to access using
unique face recognition.
 The algorithms for the three systems are
being revised and alterations are done in
order to better the working of this
technology.
 The three methods are being combined
in order to provide more accurate
results.
IX COMPARITIVE STUDY
Among the different biometric techniques, facial
recognition may not be the most reliable and
efficient. However, one key advantage is that it
does not require aid (or consent) from the test
subject. Properly designed systems installed in
airports, multiplexes, and other public places can
identify individuals among the crowd. Other
biometrics like fingerprints, iris scans, and
speech recognition cannot perform this kind of
mass identification. However, questions have
been raised on the effectiveness of facial
recognition software in cases of railway and
airport security the performance of the latest face
recognition algorithms were evaluated in
the Face Recognition Grand Challenge (FRGC).
High-resolution face images, 3-D face scans, and
iris images were used in the tests. The results
indicated that the new algorithms are 10 times
more accurate than the face recognition
algorithms of 2002 and 100 times more accurate
than those of 1995. Some of the algorithms were
able to outperform human participants in
recognizing faces and could uniquely identify
identical twins.[6]
Low-resolution images of faces can be enhanced
using face hallucination. Further improvements
in high resolution, mega pixel cameras in the last
few years have helped to resolve the issue of
insufficient resolution.
 X CONCLUSION

We present a novel approach for face recognition

based on the physiological information extracted
from thermal facial images. First, we delineate
the human face from the background using a
Bayesian method. Then, we extract the blood
vessels present on the segmented facial tissue
using image morphology. The extracted vascular
network produces contour shapes that are unique
for each individual. The branching points of the
skeleton zed vascular network are referred to as
thermal minutia points (TMPs). These are
reminiscent of the minutia points produced in
fingerprint recognition techniques. During the
classification stage, local and global structures of
TMPs extracted from test images are matched
with those of database images. We have
conducted experiments on a large database of
thermal facial images collected in our lab. The
good experimental results show that our
proposed approach has merit and promise.

X I REFERENCE:

• http://www.seminarsonly.com/computer
%20science/Face%20Recognition
%20Technology.php
• http://www.vlsi.uwindsor.ca/presentatio
ns/xu1v_seminar_1.pdf
• http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/fa
cial-recognition.htm
• http://www.ansatt.hig.no/erikh/papers/n
obim2000.pdf
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_reco
gnition_system#Skin_texture_analysis