Racial categorization methods: A survey

Abstract

Face explicitly provides the direct and quick way to evaluate human soft biometric information such as race, age and gender. Race is a group of human beings who differ from human beings of other races with respect to physical or social attributes. Race identification plays a significant role in applications such as criminal judgment and forensic art, human computer interface, and psychology science based applications as it provides crucial information about the person. However, categorizing a person into respective race category is a challenging task because human faces comprise of complex and uncertain facial features. Several racial categorization methods are available in literature to identify race groups of humans. In this paper, we present a comprehensive and comparative review of these racial categorization methods. Our review covers survey of the important concepts, comparative analysis of single model as well as multi model racial categorization methods, applications, and challenges in racial categorization. Our review provides state-of-the-art technical information concerning racial categorization and hence, will be useful to the research community for development of efficient and robust racial categorization methods.