International Journal of Video & Image Processing and Network Security IJVIPNS-IJENS Vol: 11 No: 01 26

118001-3232 IJVIPNS-IJENS February 2011 IJENS

I J E NS
Automatic Ear Recognition System using Back
Propagation Neural Network.

1
Samuel Adebayo Daramola,
2
Oladejo Daniel Oluwaninyo

1,2
Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Covenant University Ota Ogun State, Nigeria.


1
dabaslectcu@yahoo. com,
2
neyo4arsenal@yahoo.co.uk

Abstract-- This paper presents a new approach for automatic
ear recognition system using energy-edge density feature and
Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN). Input ear image is
decomposed into four sub-bands using Haar wavelet transform.
Thereafter fused feature is extracted from image blocks of each
of the detailed sub-bands. The fused feature is used as input to
neural network for effective ear image classification. The
proposed system has been tested using ear images collected from
350 people. Experimental results have demonstrated the
effectiveness of the proposed system in term of recognition
accuracy in comparison with previous methods.

I ndex Term-- Ear image, Haar wavelet transform, Back
propagation Neural Network.


1. INTRODUCTION
Person identification is a problem of determining the identity
of an individual by comparing a query image characteristic
with subject images in the database. Biometric recognition of
person is based on physiological or behavioral characteristics
like ear, face, iris, fingerprint, signature, speech and gait.
Automatic person identity recognition based on biometric ear
image is relatively a new research area, it is an image
processing technique of transforming ear image to feature
vector for personal identification. Human ear contain rich and
stable features, it is more reliable than face because the
structure of the ear does not change in proportional to
increase in age. It has been found that no two ears are exactly
the same even that of identical twins [1] [2]. Ear features can
be used for single modality or multimodal approach with
other biometric trait for effective personal recognition [3].
Although many researchers have proposed 2D and 3D ear
recognition systems with different approaches and raw data
but this research area still need more attention in order to
develop effective system for different commercial
applications. Effectiveness of any verification or recognition
system depends mainly on the feature extraction technique.
Fast computation technique that is able to extract robust,
invariant features is paramount for efficient recognition
system.
Hurley et al [4] proposed a novel feature extraction method
for automatic ear recognition using force field transformation.
The feature vector is extracted from 2D ear images by
mapping the ear channel and well as energy field. They
assumed that pixels have mutual attraction proportional t o
their intensities and inversely proportional to the square of the
distance between them. Burge et al [5] also developed a
biometric ear recognition system using graph matching
model. The graph is formed from voronoi diagram curve
extracted from canny edge ear image. In [6], they extracted
features from an ear image by measuring geometric relations
between predetermined points (lengths and angles).
Geometrical structures observed from pixel value distances
are used for ear image recognition. In [7] ear recognition
system based on template matching technique is proposed.
Haar wavelet transform is used to decompose ear image. The
coefficient matrices of the wavelet are computed and used for
ear recognition. In [8] they presented ear recognition system
that based on wavelet transform and local binary pattern.
Features are extracted from image blocks of sub-band of
wavelet decomposition.
From the approaches mentioned above, some authors used
single, global feature vector to represent ear image, while
some used higher level wavelet transform decomposition to
extract texture features but such feature are not effective in
capturing discriminative information of ear image. In order to
strength system performance, in this work first level Haar
wavelet decomposition and block division method are used to
extract fused feature capable of representing ear image at
local level from detailed sub-bands. The experimental results
have shown the effectiveness of the proposed system in
comparison with other previous ear recognition systems.
Section II provides the description of the system. Section III
describes wavelet transform, feature extraction and fusion
techniques. Section IV presents the training and classification
of ear image using back propagation Neutral Network.
Section V shows the experimental result and finally,
conclusions are drawn in section VI.
II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
The flow diagram of the proposed system is shown in fig. 1.
Ear image is used as input to the system during training or
testing process. Haar wavelet transform is used to decompose
ear image into four sub bands. Discriminative textural energy
and edge density features are extracted separately from image
International Journal of Video & Image Processing and Network Security IJVIPNS-IJENS Vol: 11 No: 01 27

118001-3232 IJVIPNS-IJENS February 2011 IJENS
I J E NS
blocks of the LH
1
, HL
1
and HH
1
sub-bands. Thereafter the
two features are fused together to obtain a robust ear feature.
This feature is used to generate reference data during training
and classification of ear image.



Input image










Query feature Reference parameters


Output class
Fig. 1. Flow diagram of t he proposed ear recognit ion syst em.

III. FEATURE EXTRACTION USING WAVELET
TRANSFORM DECOMPOSITION
Wavelet transform is a multi-resolution technique. It is
capable of providing time and frequency information of signal
simultaneous. Hence it give time and frequency
representation of signal. There are various wavelet
transforms like Haar, Daubechies, Coiflet and Symlet. They
differ from each other in term of formation and
reconstruction. Haar wavelet is the first known wavelet and
was proposed in 1909 by Alfred Haar. The wavelet
transforms decompose original image into four sub-bands and
these sub-bands are denoted by LL, HL, LH and HH. LH
corresponds to vertical high frequencies and the image LL
corresponds to the lowest frequencies. HL corresponds to
horizontal high frequencies while HH corresponds to diagonal
high frequencies. At the subsequent scale of analysis, the
image LL undergoes decomposition using the same filters,
having always the lowest frequency component located in the
upper left corner of the image. Each stage of decomposition
produces next four sub-bands whose size is reduced twice
when compared to the previous scale but the size of the
wavelet representation is the same as the size of the original
image [9][10].
Various features about the original image can be
obtained from the sub-bands, for instance average
components are detected by the LL sub-band, vertical edges
are detected by the HL sub-band, and horizontal edges are
detected by the LH sub-band while diagonal edges are
detected by the HH sub-band. For most practical
applications, the number of levels to which an image is
decomposed is based on the resolution of the image and it has
effect on the extracted features. In essence, lower wavelet
decomposition levels are used to reveal high frequency
features, while higher levels are used to expose low frequency
features. For this work, first level decomposition is used in
combination with block division method in order to extract
high frequency features at local level.

A. Texture Energy and Edge Density Feature
This section presents technique that extracts texture energy
and edge information from LH
1
, HL
1
and HH
1
sub-band.
These sub-bands are obtained from Haar wavelet
decomposition of grayscale ear image. The following steps
are used to extract energy and edge density feature from
localized area of the image blocks.
(1) Divide LH
1
, HL
1
and HH
1
sub-band space into
square image blocks. Each of the sub-bands is
divided equally into four image-blocks. A total
number of 12 image blocks are obtained from the
three sub-bands as show in fig. 2.











Fig. 2. Block division of LH1, HL1 and HH1 sub-band.

(2) Compute the texture energy (E) from each of the image
blocks. Let B
k
(i j) represent the image block therefore
energy (E
k
) of k
th
image block is given as :

A
i
C
j
k k
j i B
AXC
E
1 1
) , (
1
(1)

AXC is the size of the image block.

Neutral Network training algorithm

Ear image decomposition using Haar wavelet
transforms

Features extraction from LH
1
,
HL
1
and HH
1
image-blocks
Fusion of image energy and edge density features
Neural Network testing algorithm

LL
1

1LH
1
2LH
1


3LH
1
4LH
1

1HL
1
2HL
1


3HL
1
4HL
1

1HH
1
2HH
1


3HH
1
4HH
1

International Journal of Video & Image Processing and Network Security IJVIPNS-IJENS Vol: 11 No: 01 28

118001-3232 IJVIPNS-IJENS February 2011 IJENS
I J E NS
(3) Calculate the edge density feature of each of image
blocks. This feature measures the average edge magnitudes in
the region. The edge magnitude is a combination of the edge
strengths along the horizontal and vertical directions . The
edge magnitude image (M(i, j)) is found by applying edge
detector called Sobel operator to B(i j). Two sober edge
detector operators (G
x
and Gy) are used to calculate the
horizontal and vertical gradient of image intensity at each
point respectively using (2).

x
B
G
x

and
y
B
G
y

(2)
The gradient magnitude M(i,j) is calculated using (3)


2 2
) , (
y x
G G j i M
(3)

For each of image block B (i j), the edge density feature (D
k
)
is given as:

A
i
C
j
k
j i M
AXC
D
1 1
) , (
1
(4)


(4) Fuse the two features together to form a short-length
feature vector. The resulting combined energy-edge density
feature vector is given as:

n n ed
D D D D D E E E E E f . .......... , , , , ......... , , ,
4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1

(5)

Where n is the number of image blocks.
(5) Normalize the fused feature vector (f
ed
) to values that
range from 0 to 1. This is achieved by dividing each of the
feature value by the highest feature component.



IV. BACKPROPAGATION NEURAL NETWORK FOR
EAR RECOGNITION
Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN) is a multilayered,
feed forward Neural Network (NN) and is by far the most
widely used. The basic structure of the BPNN includes one
input layer, at least one hidden layer (there could be a single
layer or multiple layers), followed by output layer. The
network receives inputs information by neurons in the input
layer and the output information is given by the neurons in the
output layer. This allows the network to learn non linear and
linear relationships between input and output vectors. This
means that the interconnected neurons are organized in layers
and send their signals forward and then the errors are
propagated backward. Back Propagation works by adjusting
the weight values during training in order to reduce the error
between actual and desire output pattern [11].
In this work, we used three layers BPNN as the classifier,
the number of node in the input layer is equal to dimension of
the feature vector that characterizes the ear image
information. The number of the node in the hidden layer is set
by trial and error during training. The number of node in the
out layer is equal to the number of the subjects in the
database.
During learning process, the number of node in the hidden
layer, the learning coefficient and the momentum rate are
adjusted in order to achieved the set minimum error value
which is consider suitable for this application, once the Mean
Square Error (MSE) is reached, the final weight and the
threshold of the network are stored to create knowledge base
for the recognition stage. The BPNN learning algorithm tries
to minimize the difference MSE between the targets and
predicts output by adjusting weight and bias of each of the
neurons. The total MSE is computed as given in (6) using all
training images.


) (
2
1
1 1
ij
m
j
k
i
ij
O T MSE



(6)

Where m is the number of training sample, k is the number of
output units, T
ij
is the target output value of the ith output unit
for the jth training sample, and O
ij
is the actual output of the
ith output unit for the jth training sample.
In the recognition phase, the features from the query
ear image that is to be tested is fed into the network without
having any target output, BPNN testing algorithm found the
closest matching output using the weights and thresholds that
have stored and provided the corresponding recognized ear.


V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
Experiments have been conducted to evaluate the
effectiveness of the system by using our ear images database.
The database contains 1050 ear images collected from 350
subjects. We have trained the BRNN on all subjects present in
the database. We have provided the network with 2 training
images of each of the subjects. We have calculated the
network response recognition rate with different number of
subjects as shown in Table I. Also in Table II, the recognition
rates of the system based on Euclidean distance and Neural
Network is compared. The results from TableII showed that
the recognition rates of the method proposed using BPNN is
higher in comparison with other previous method proposed in
[7 ][ 8].





International Journal of Video & Image Processing and Network Security IJVIPNS-IJENS Vol: 11 No: 01 29

118001-3232 IJVIPNS-IJENS February 2011 IJENS
I J E NS
TABLE I
NEURAL NETWORK RECOGNITION RESPONSE
Number
of
Subject
Recognized
ear image
Unrecognized
ear image
Recognition
rate (%)
50 49 1 98.00
150 147 3 98.00
250 243 7 97.20
350 341 9 97.42

TABLE II
RECOGNITION RATE OF BACK-PROPAGATION NEURAL NETWORK AND
EUCLIDEAN DISTANCE

Classifier

Num-
ber of
Subject

Recognized
ear image

Unrecognized
ear image

Recognit
ion rate
(%)
Euclidean
Distance
150 130 20 86.67
BPNN 150 147 3 98.00

VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have introduced a new approach for ear
recognition for better security application. The high
recognition rate results obtained can be traced to combination
strength of Back Propagation Neural Network and fused
feature used in the proposed system. Wavelet transforms and
blocks division methods have helped to access high frequency
textural features of the ear image at local level.

REFERENCES
[1] B. Vict or, K. Bowyer, and s. Sarkar, An Evaluat ion of face and
Ear Biomet ric, Proc. 16
th
Int ernat ional conference of Pat t ern
Recognit ion, 2002, pp.429-432.
[2] K. chang, K.Bowyer, and V. Barnabas, Comparison and
Combinat ion of Ear and Face Image in Appearance-Based
Biomet rics, IEEE Trans. Pat t ern Analysis and Machine
Int elligence, 2003, 25, pp. 1160-1165.
[3] A. A. Darwish, R. Abd Elghafar and A. Fawzi Ali, Mult imodal
Face and Ear Images, Journal of Comput er Science 5(5), 2009
pp374-379.
[4] D. Hurley, M. Nixon and Cart er, Force Field Energy Funct ional
for Ear Biometrics, Computer Vision and Image Underst anding,
2005, 98, pp.491-512.
[5] M. Burge and W. Burger, Ear biometrics in Computer Vision, in
Proceedings of t he 15
th
Int ernat ional Conference on Pat t ern
recognit ion, 2000.
[6] Md. Mahbubur Rahman, Md. Rashedul Islam, Nazmul Islam
Bhuiyan, Bulbul Ahmed, Md. Aminul Islam , Person
Ident ification Using Ear Biometrics International Journal of The
Comput er, t he Int ernet and Management Vol. 15: 2 (May -
August , 2007) pp 1 8.
[7] Y. Wang, Z. Mu, and H. Zeng, Block-based and mult i-resolut ion
met hods for ear recognition using wavelet t ransform and uniform
local binary pat t erns, Proceedings of t he 19
th
Int ernat ional
Conference on Pat t ern recognit ion, 2008.
[8] Anupam Sana, Phalguni Gupt a and Ruma Purkait, Ear biometric:
A New Approach, WSPC- Proceedings (ICAPR 2007).
[9] S. Arivazhagan L. Ganesan Aut omat ic Target Det ect ion Using
Wavelet Transform EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal
Processing 2004:17, 26632674.
[10] U.S.N Raju, A. Srikrishna, V. Vijaya Kumar and A. Suresh,
Ext ract ion of Skelet on Primit ives on Wavelet s, Journal of
Theoretical and Applied Information Technology pp1065 1074,
2008.
[11] S.A Daramola, Development of a Robust Aut omatic Off-line and
On-line Handwrit ten Signat ure Verification Syst em," PhD. Thesis,
Depart ment of Electrical and Information Engineering Covenant
Universit y Ot a. June, 2008.



Authors Profile
Dr. Samuel Adebayo Daramol a obt ained Bachelor of Engineering from
Universit y of Ado-Ekit i Nigeria, in 1997. Mast er of Engineering from
Universit y of Port harcourt , Nigeria in 2002 and PhD from Covenant
Universit y, Nigeria in 2008. He is working current ly as a Lect urer for t he
Elect rical and Information Engineering department in Covenant Universit y
Ot a Nigeria. He has published many papers in int ernat ional Journals. His
research int erest s include Image processing and crypt ography.

Ol adejo Daniel Oluwaninyo is a graduat ing st udent in t he depart ment of
Elect rical and Information Engineering Covenant Universit y Ot a, Nigeria
2011. His research interests include Image processing and communicat ion.