Face image quality evaluation for ISO/IEC standards 19794-5 and 29794-5

Abstract

Face recognition performance can be significantly influenced by face image quality. The approved ISO/IEC standard 19794-5 has specified recommendations for face photo taking for E-passport and related applications. Standardization of face image quality, ISO/IEC 29794-5, is in progress. Bad illumination, facial pose and out-of-focus are among main reasons that disqualify a face image sample. This paper presents several algorithms for face image quality assessment. Illumination conditions and facial pose are evaluated in terms of facial symmetry, and implemented based on Gabor wavelet features. Assessment of camera focus is done based on discrete cosine transform (DCT). These methods are validated by experiments. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009.