Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD
Do biometric systems still work despite wearing masks?
Face recognition has become essential in our daily lives as a convenient and contactless method of accurate identity verification. Process such as identity verification at automatic border control gates or the secure login to electronic devices are increasingly dependant on such technologies.
The recent COVID-19 pandemic have increased the value of hygienic and contactless identity verification. However, the pandemic led to the wide use of face masks, essential to keep the pandemic under control. The effect of wearing a mask on face recognition in a collaborative environment is currently sensitive yet understudied issue. Our experts address that by presenting a specifically collected database containing three session, each with three different capture instructions, to simulate realistic use cases. They further study the effect of masked face probes on the behaviour of three top-performing face recognition systems, two academic solutions and one commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) system.
The paper was presented at BIOSIG 2020.