Application of cosmetics can restrict traditional facial-recognition systems

Application of facepaints or cosmetics can change facial signatures and also restrict traditional biometric facial-recognition systems based on visible imaging.

A team of researchers comprising doctors Nathaniel Short, Alex Yuffa, Gorden Videen, and Shuowen Hu, from US Army Research Laboratory, Maryland, undertook a study to investigate the effect of facepaints and cosmetic materials on polarimetric-thermal facial signatures.

US Army Research Laboratory lead researcher Nathaniel Short said: "Our experiments show how facepaints and cosmetics degrade the performance of traditional facial-recognition methods and we provide a new approach to mitigating this effect using polarimetric-thermal imaging."

They compared visible, conventional thermal and new polarimetric-thermal images of faces before and after the application of face paint and found that surface materials have relatively little impact on polarimetric-thermal imagery, thereby demonstrating the efficacy of polarimetric-thermal imaging for recognising faces even in the presence of make-up.

Short said: "Our study has demonstrated polarimetric-thermal imaging can be substantially more robust to facepaints, and to a degree cosmetics, for facial recognition than visible imaging."

Visible-light imaging depends heavily on capturing the light reflected from the edges of the faces and this poses a challenge when faces are covered with cosmetics, as the reflected light from face edges are dependent upon the source of illumination and the spectral characteristics of the facial tissue.

However, an infrared, thermal signature is naturally emitted from the human face and can be acquired even in low-illumination conditions or if face is covered with paints or cosmetics.