Computing

Looking for Signs of Life

(Page 2 of 2)

  • Tuesday, July 17, 2007
  • By Duncan Graham-Rowe

According to Michael Bronstein, a computer scientist who works on 3-D face recognition at the Technion Institute of Technology, in Israel, another method used by commercial face-biometrics systems is to try to detect natural movements, such as blinking. However, these systems could be fooled by a video recording, Bronstein says.

Bigun's approach takes the optical-flow concept a step further. "We looked at how a 3-D face moves," he says. By comparing how bent photos of faces and real faces move, the researchers were able to identify differences in the trajectories of key facial points. For example, the movement of an ear and nose as a head turns slightly will be different from those appearing on a bent photo. This is because the parts of the face in the photo are still on a single plane, even if the photo is bent; conversely, the trajectories of 3-D facial features are more complex and follow a particular pattern relative to each other. Using this information, the researchers created a system to detect such discrepancies.

In experiments using 400 high-quality photographs and 400 video recordings of real people, the system was able to achieve an equal error rate--a common standard in biometrics in which the number of false matches is equal to the number of false rejections--of 0.5 percent. The results will be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Image and Vision Computing.

"It makes sense to do this," says Mark Nixon, a professor of computer vision at the University of Southampton, in the UK. "Liveness is quite an issue." Some other kinds of biometrics already have ways of dealing with it, such as fingerprint biometrics. "You can use infrared and sweat to give a liveness measure," Nixon says.

According to Bigun, the only way of beating the system he helped develop would be to make an accurate 3-D mask of someone's face. While it's feasible that someone with connections to Hollywood makeup artists could do this, it's pretty unlikely, says Mitsubishi's Jones. "It's just not practical for the random criminal."

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Bruceahz

38 Comments

  • 1673 Days Ago
  • 07/17/2007

why not a challenge?

Wouldn't it be fairly simple to present a challenge "question"? Something like "Please open your mouth now" or "Please close one eye now". Since the request is randomly selected from a group of possible actions, no video can be prepared a priori.

Reply

nulloot

1 Comment

  • 1672 Days Ago
  • 07/18/2007

Re: why not a challenge?

Amagine yourself as an end user. How soon will you get tired of smiling, blinking, turning or something else doing in order to get identified?

Reply

EGZone

3 Comments

  • 1671 Days Ago
  • 07/19/2007

Re: why not a challenge?

I fully agree with you guys...being a technical man myself i do understand how difficult it can be rubbing head when we don't know what to do.

Anyone interested in discussing such stuffs are welcome at: www.egzone.info

Or simply visit my blog and open a new thread where we do have many domain experts in their respective fields at: www.egzone.info/blog.

Reply

cronodragon

2 Comments

  • 1673 Days Ago
  • 07/17/2007

Puppet

Just make a puppet of the face and the system will be violated.

Reply

Guest (bob c.e.t.)

  • 1673 Days Ago
  • 07/17/2007

smile

smile???????

Reply

Redwood

1 Comment

  • 1672 Days Ago
  • 07/18/2007

Detecting live people

Requesting that the subject blink or move seems like an easy way to distinguish between photos and live people.  If that approach is unacceptable, live eyes can be detected using their retroreflective properties.

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