A Comprehensive Database for Benchmarking Imaging Systems

• Published in: IEEE transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence Vol. 42; no. 3; pp. 509 - 520
• Main Authors: Panetta, Karen, Wan, Qianwen, Agaian, Sos, Rajeev, Srijith, Kamath, Shreyas, Rajendran, Rahul, Rao, Shishir Paramathma, Kaszowska, Aleksandra, Taylor, Holly A., Samani, Arash, Yuan, Xin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 01.03.2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Algorithms; Automated Facial Recognition - methods; Benchmarking; Cameras; Child; Child, Preschool; Colleges & universities; computerized face sketches; cross-modality; Databases, Factual; Face; Face - anatomy & histology; Face - diagnostic imaging; Face recognition; Female; Humans; Image acquisition; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted - methods; Image recognition; Imaging, Three-Dimensional; Infrared imagery; Infrared photography; Machine learning; Male; Middle Aged; near infrared; The tufts face database; thermal; Three-dimensional displays; Young Adult
• ISSN: 0162-8828; 1939-3539; 2160-9292; 1939-3539
• DOI: 10.1109/TPAMI.2018.2884458

Cross-modality face recognition is an emerging topic due to the wide-spread usage of different sensors in day-to-day life applications. The development of face recognition systems relies greatly on existing databases for evaluation and obtaining training examples for data-hungry machine learning algorithms. However, currently, there is no publicly available face database that includes more than two modalities for the same subject. In this work, we introduce the Tufts Face Database that includes images acquired in various modalities: photograph images, thermal images, near infrared images, a recorded video, a computerized facial sketch, and 3D images of each volunteer's face. An Institutional Research Board protocol was obtained and images were collected from students, staff, faculty, and their family members at Tufts University. The database includes over 10,000 images from 113 individuals from more than 15 different countries, various gender identities, ages, and ethnic backgrounds. The contributions of this work are: 1) Detailed description of the content and acquisition procedure for images in the Tufts Face Database; 2) The Tufts Face Database is publicly available to researchers worldwide, which will allow assessment and creation of more robust, consistent, and adaptable recognition algorithms; 3) A comprehensive, up-to-date review on face recognition systems and face datasets.