The dark side of the face: Exploring the ultraviolet spectrum for face biometrics

Facial recognition in the visible spectrum is a widely used application but it is also still a major field of research. In this paper we present melanin face pigmentation (MFP)as a new modality to be used to extend classical face biometrics. Melanin pigmentation are sun-damaged cells that occur as revealed and/or unrevealed pattern on human skin. Most MFP can be found in the faces of some people when using ultraviolet (UV) imaging. To proof the relevance of this feature for biometrics, we present a novel image dataset of 91 multiethnic subjects in both, the visible and the UV spectrum. We show a method to extract the MFP features from the UV images, using the well known SURF features and compare it with other techniques. In order to proof its benefits, we use weighted score-level fusion and evaluate the performance in an one against all comparison. As a result we observed a significant amplification of performance where traditional face recognition in the visible spectrum is extended with MFP from UV images. We conclude with a future perspective about the use of these features for future research and discuss observed issues and limitations.