Cosmetics can significantly hinder the ability of facial recognition systems to identify individuals for the purposes of surveillance and security, a study has confirmed.
A research team from US Army Research Laboratory in Maryland, US, has found that cosmetics and face paints present a challenge to visible imaging facial recognition systems because they alter the facial signature.
Being able to recognise a face using visible-light imaging requires capturing reflected light from key edges of the face, such as the eyes, nose or mouth. However, cosmetics can distort the perceived shape of these features leading to below-average accuracy of visual imaging.
However, the researchers did find that using a new technique that includes thermal-imaging could mitigate this issue. The researchers compared the results of using visible, conventional thermal and polarimetric thermal images of faces before and after the application of face paint. The results showed that polarimetric thermal imagery was far more accurate at recognising faces in the presence of make-up.
Polarimetric thermal imaging records the polarisation state information of thermal infrared emission, allowing for the collection of geometric facial information from thermal imagery, providing advantages over conventional thermal imaging. Lead researcher Nathaniel Short said: “Our experiments show how face paints and cosmetics degrade the performance of traditional facial recognition methods and we provide a new approach to mitigating this effect using polarimetric-thermal imaging.”