Facial recognition

research

Enoch Tam
 Table of content

Introduction

Data collection

Analyze result

Conclusion

Appendix
Introduction

This report research on how computer algorithm identify faces of people, different method, and so
advantage as well as disadvantage of the method.

Data collection
A series of data have been collected, a total of 125 faces data have been collected in the form of 6 part of
measurement, the 6 different part are: the distance from the top of the head to the chin, the distance from
ear to ear, the distance from the corner of the eye to the chin, the distance from edge of eye to edge of
eye, the length of the nose, the distance from the nose to the chin. These part are named from A to F
respectively. (as the picture below shown)

Then the data are further arranged into ratio between parts, for example, A:B, A:C, A:D, …, D:F and E:F,
which include a total of 15 ratio. For example, measuring ratio of A:B:

𝐴1 = 18, 𝐵1 = 12.5
𝐴: 𝐵 = 𝐴 ÷ 𝐵 = 18 ÷ 12.5 = 1.44
∴ 𝐴: 𝐵 = 1.44

All 15 ratios are then rearranged from the greatest to the smallest, considering that fact that each set of
face contain 15 ratio data point, 125 faces will have a total of 1875 ratio in total (appendix 1),

15 × 125 = 1875

rearranging 1875 set of ratio from greatest to smallest is an impossible task to execute. Therefore, an
average will be taken from all 125 set of ratio, and rearrange the ratio using the averaged data set.
Ranking 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
from
large to
small

ratio A:E A:F B:E B:F A:D C:E C:F A:C D:E B:D D:F A:B C:D B:C E:F

value 4.02 3.30 2.80 2.31 2.30 2.23 1.83 1.81 1.76 1.60 1.45 1.44 1.27 1.26 0.84
During the collection of data, ratio form was used instead of absolute length, the consideration was that
original source of faces can vary through different camera or focus, faces cannot be compared accurately,
resulting in decrease accuracy of the facial recognition process.

Although ratio was used in the process of data collection, the range of the data still vary. Therefore,
percentage range are introduced to keep track of the accuracy of the data set.

The percentage range of a ratio set are calculated by first finding the maximum and minimum value of a
ratio set, then calculated the difference of the maximum and minimum, and lastly divided the difference
by the maximum number. For example, out of 125 ratio, ratio set A:B have a largest ratio of 1.96 and a
smallest ratio of 1.08, so the range of ratio A:B is:
(1.96 − 1.08)
= 0.449 = 44.9%
1.96
It can be stated that the percentage variation of the ratio A:B is 44.9%.

Calculate the percentage variation of all 15 ratio sets references the accuracy of the data sets, rearrange
the percentage variation of all 15 ratio sets from the greatest to the smallest,
Ranking 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
from large
to small
ratio B:E C:E A:E A:C E:F D:E B:F C:D B:C D:F B:D A:D A:F C:F A:B

Percentage 64.8 63.4 61.6 60.7 58.3 58.1 55.1 54.7 54.5 54.3 53.1 47.8 47.0 45.7 44.9
variation(%)

From the result table formed, there are some discovery, it can be discovered that out of the 6 ratios that
have the highest percentage variation, 5 are involved with the data part E, therefore, it can be stated that
part E of the data measurement contain the widest range or variation.

During the facial recognition process, some issues maybe encountered and effect the accuracy of the
recognition. In public places, crowded area may create difficulty for the camera to capture important part
of the face, some people maybe obscured by other people, resulting in lack of facial data or information.
This problem can be overcome by inserting more camera around the public area, the camera can capture
image at more different angles, it can also be improved by using the facial recognition algorithm of
Facebook, which take advantage of human characteristic, and improve the chance of success pairing
through different clues other then pure facial measurement.
Another difficulty for measuring faces in public places is the high moving speed, when people run through
camera at a high speed, the camera encounter difficulty to accurately identify the critical part for the facial
measurement. High frame rate and high resolution camera can be used to resolve the issues.

Analyze result
In this current research, 6 different facial measurements were collected, and 15 ratios was form according
to the 6 measurement, it can be stated that 6 facial measurement generate 15 ratios. In order to increase
the accuracy of this facial recognition method, more ratios can be generated and put into use by increasing
the initial data point, which is the facial measurement.
Generalize an equation to calculate the amount of facial measurement needed to generate a certain
amount of ratios, according to the method the ratios were generated in the data collection section, it can
be notices that facial measurement and ratio formed have a combination relationship, for example:

𝐶26 = 15
it can then be stated that from the 6 facial measurement, 2 were chosen to form a ratio, where order do
not matter, so A:B = B:A. Therefore, the equation is combination chose 2 from 6.
Calculate the number of facial measurement required to generate 256 ratios can be solved with reverse
engineering, the process is as the following,
since the facial measurement chose each time are always 2,

∴ 𝐶𝑟𝑛 = 𝐶2𝑛
for example, the ratio need to be larger or equal to 256,

𝐶2𝑛 = 256
𝑛!
= 256
(2! (𝑛 − 2)!)
𝑛! = 256(2! (𝑛 − 2)!)
𝑛! = 256 × 2! × (𝑛 − 2)!
𝑛!
= 512
(𝑛 − 2)!
𝑛(𝑛 − 1)(𝑛 − 2)!
= 512
(𝑛 − 2)!
𝑛(𝑛 − 1) = 512
𝑛2 − 𝑛 − 512 = 0
solve the quadric equation with quadric formula,

−𝑏 ± √𝑏 2 − 4𝑎𝑐
𝑛=
2𝑎
1 ± √1 − 4 × 1 × −512
𝑛=
2×1
1 ± √2049
𝑛=
2
therefore, the facial measurement needed is at least 23.1, which round up to 24.
It can be stated that 24 facial measurements are need to generate 256 ratios.
Similarly, bigger ratio can also be calculated by reverse engineering of the combination formula, for
example, large ratio like 1000 and 10000 needed facial measurement of:

𝐶2𝑛 = 1000
𝑛 ≈ 46
and

𝐶2𝑛 = 10000
𝑛 ≈ 142
Therefore, it can be stated that 1000 ratios need at least 46 facial measurements and 10000 ratios need at
least 142 facial measurements respectively.

As a matter of fact, it is observed that the facial measurement can consistently increase to generate more
ratios. In addition, more ratio can provide more accuracy to the facial recognition, expending from this
concept, it is theoretically possible to create infinite facial measurement, such that it can identify all
individual uniquely. However, it is practically impossible to create infinite measurement, regardless, it can
be stated that the more facial measurement data are collected, more accurate the facial recognition is.
There are also advantage and disadvantage for using more ratio. Firstly, more ratio will require more time
and computing unit to collect, as well as processing and saving it in a database. Secondly, the more data of
measurement collect, it requires huge amount of memory unit to storage. Thirdly, collecting such huge
amount of data point will request high quality camera together with large quantity of the camera all over
the place to effectively activate the camera. Fourthly, a strong software program cannot be absent to
smoothly link all piece of the whole facial recognition together. Fifthly, the system will process slower
because of the large amount of data are required to calculated by it. Lastly, with the 5 above requirement,
the system will cost a lot of money to run and repair.
On the other hand, there are also advantage for large number of ratio. The accuracy of the facial
recognition system will increase, the system will be able to recognize most faces and even special faces,
this can result significantly on counter terries and crime, as well as searching for missing population, it
would also be able to identify extremely minor differences such as twins, and be able to pair correctly.

There are current 3 main facial recognition methods that are most wisely used, it is the holistic matching
method, the features-based methods and the hybrid method. One example of the holistic matching
method is the eigenfaces method, this method is based on a 2D face, it uses sample faces and extract
characteristic from the face, then it turns the data into vector and store it into a matrix, when comparing
faces, simply extract the characteristic of that person face and compare the most suitable matrix, the
advantage of this method is that it saves a lot of memory, since all the data are stored as vector instead of
picture, but the downside is that image must lane up perfectly with the set up of the system.
Another method is the features-based methods, this method simply extract the characteristic of the
person face geometrically, such as eyes, noses and then the data are convert into a structural classifier,
when paring for faces, simply compare the characteristic. The advantage of this method is easy to match,
unlike last method, this method can have a wide ranged image and still be able to identify the
characteristic of the face, but there still is a limit, if the difference of the range were too large, for example,
matching only a head pose with profile photo, this would be too hard to pair.
The last method is based on a 3D face, the hybrid method takes 3D measure such as depth and axis of the
person into a count, it then determines the angle, size of the head, as well as how the eye curve and the
angle of the nose, it then transfer these data into numerical data and store it in a database. When
comparing for faces, it accesses the data base and matches the most suitable faces. The advantage of this
method is accuracy, since it is capable of measuring 3D in-depth measure, it is more accurate at paring
faces then the other 2 methods. This method also contain disadvantage, since is a 3D model, it suffers
problem to interchange between 2D and 3D database, therefore, it needs an access of 3D data of it own,
instead of using the existing 2D database.

It can be stated that this facial recognition has been in-depth analyzed, however, all the circumstances that
were discussed are mainly base on adult facial recognition, it is suspect that small children of baby will vary
with this facial recognition system, in order to discuss the differences between adult faces and baby
faces(appendix 2), 2 baby faces data was collected with the exact same method used from the 125 above
ratios, and the result was:
Ranking 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
from
large to
small
ratio A:E B:E A:F B:F D:E C:E A:C D:F A:D C:F B:C B:D A:B C:D E:F
value 6.25 5.55 4.09 3.64 3.12 2.91 2.13 2.05 2.00 1.91 1.90 1.78 1.13 0.94 0.66
From the table, it is clear that the ranking(appendix 3) has not changed significantly, the ratio that contain
E and F data set as a base are still ranked in the largest rank. Although the ratio of baby did not vary greatly
on the ranking, but this can be cause by the fact that there were only 2 faces. It can be discovered that the
value of the ratio of the baby are larger then the one of adult, again this maybe effected by the small
amount facial measurement taken from the baby, but this can also be considering that the baby face are
not developed. Therefore, the ratio of baby faces is different from adult faces.
On the other hand, since baby and adult are both human, although the ratio do vary, most of the ratio still
remains the same. Therefore, it can be stated that the same facial recognition that was used to collect data
in this research, it can also work on recognizing baby faces, but the accuracy is lower.

To conclude, to increase the accuracy of facial measurement recognition method, it can be archive by
increasing the facial measurement in taken, which will be more expensive and hard to archive, but it is not
impossible to do.
Appendix
(appendix 1)
(appendix 2)

(appendix 3)