Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

Ear Biometrics for Human Identification Based on Image Analysis Michal Choras
Image Processing Group Institute of Telecommunication ATR Bydgoszcz, Poland

Presentation for ELCVIA Journal

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN IDENTIFICATION

Traditional methods:
    PINs Logins & Passwords Identification Cards Specific Keys

Disadvantages of the traditional methods:

 hard to remember  easy to loose  lack of security
 cards and keys are often stolen  passwords can be cracked

Identification by something that people know or possess.

 invasiveness

Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

INTRODUCTION TO BIOMETRICS
Definition: automatic identification of a living person based on physiological or behavioural characteristics.

Identification by who people are!

All the biometrics methods can be divided into:

Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

INTRODUCTION TO BIOMETRICS
BEHAVIOURAL Most popular methods:     voice identification signature dynamics keystroke dynamics motion recognition PHYSIOLOGICAL Hand:
 hand geometry  hand veins geometry  fingerprints  palmprints

Head:
 eye
 iris  retina

 face recognition  ear

Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

GENERAL MOTIVATION FOR EAR BIOMETRICS

WHERE DO WE HEAD ?
passive physiological biometrics

FACE AND EAR BIOMETRICS MIGHT BE THE ANSWER

Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

FACE BIOMETRICS GENERAL OVERVIEW Passive physiological method. Natural humans recognize people by looking at their faces. Fast development of new algorithms. Still many unsolved problems including compensation of illumination changes and pose invariance. Some popular methods:
2D geometry, 3D models, PCA, ICA, LDA, Gabor Wavelets, Hidden Markov Models.
Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

EAR BIOMETRICS Human ears have been used as major feature in the forensic science for many years. Earprints found on the crime scene have been used as a proof in over few hundreds cases in the Netherlands and the United States. Human ear contains large amount of specific and unique features that allows for human identification. Ear images can be easily taken from a distance and without knowledge of the examined person. Therefore suitable for security, surveillance, access control and monitoring applications.

Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

PASSIVE BIOMETRICS: EAR vs. FACE Ear does not change during human life, and face changes more significantly with age than any other part of human body. cosmetics, facial hair and hair styling, emotions express different states of mind like sadness, happiness, fear or surprise. Colour distribution is more uniform in ear than in human face, iris or retina. not much information is lost while working with the greyscale or binarized images. Ear is also smaller than face, which means that it is possible to work faster and more efficiently with the images with the lower resolution. Ear images cannot be disturbed by glasses, beard nor make-up. However, occlusion by hair or earrings is possible.

Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

SAMPLE EAR IMAGES FROM OUR DATABASE Ears differ at a first glance. We lack in vocabulary - humans just dont look at ears.

easy ear images

Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

SAMPLE EAR IMAGES FROM OUR DATABASE

difficult ear images

Removing hair for access control is simple and takes just single seconds.

Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

EAR BIOMETRICS OBVIOUS APPROACH

The method based on geometrical distances.

How to find specific points?

Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

IANNARELLIS MANUAL MEASUREMENTS The first, manual method, used by Iannarelli in the research in which he examined over 10000 ears and proved their uniqueness, was based on measuring the distances between specific points of the ear. Iannarelli proved that even twins ears are different. The major problem in ear identification systems is discovering automated method to extract those specific, key points.

Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

EAR BIOMETRICS KNOWN METHODS

Neighborhood graphs based on Voronoi diagrams.

Burge M., Burger W., Ear Recognition, in Biometrics: Personal Identification in Networked Society (eds. Jain A.K., Bolle R., Pankanti S.), 273-286, Kluwer Academic Publishing, 1998. Burge M., Burger W., Ear Biometrics for Machine Vision, Proc. Of 21st Workshop of the Austrian Association for Pattern Recognition, Hallstatt, Austria, 1997. Burge M., Burger W., Ear Biometrics in Computer Vision, IEEE ICPR 2000.

Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

EAR BIOMETRICS KNOWN METHODS

Ear Biometrics based on Force Field Transformation

Hurley D.J., Nixon M.S., Carter J.N., Automatic Ear Recognition by Force Field Transformations, IEE Colloquium on Biometrics, 2000. Hurley D.J., Nixon M.S., Carter J.N., Force Field Energy Functionals for Image Feature Extraction, Image and Vision Computing Journal, vol. 20, no. 5-6, 311-318, 2002.

Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

EAR BIOMETRICS KNOWN METHODS

Ear Biometrics based on Force Field Transformation

Application of force field transformation in order to find energy lines, wells and channels as ear features.

Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

EAR BIOMETRICS KNOWN METHODS

 Ear Biometrics based on PCA and eigenears

Chang K., Victor B., Bowyer K.W., Sarkar S., Comparison and Combination of Ear and Face Images for Biometric Recognition, 2003. Victor B., Bowyer K.W., Sarkar S., An Evaluation of Face and Ear Biometrics, Proc. of Intl. Conf. on Pattern Recognition, I: 429-432, 2002. Chang K., Victor B., Bowyer K.W., Sarkar S., Comparison and Combination of Ear and Face Images in Appereance-Based Biometrics, IEEE Trans. on PAMI, vol. 25, no. 9, 2003.

 Ear Biometrics based on compression networks

Moreno B., Sanchez A., Velez J.F., On the Use of Outer Ear Images for Personal Identification in Security Applications, IEEE 1999.

Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

EAR BIOMETRICS OUR APPROACH

Ear Biometrics Based on Geometrical Feature Extraction

Choras Michal, Feature Extraction Based on Contour Processing in Ear Biometrics, IEEE Workshop on Multimedia Communications and Services, MCS04, 15-19, Cracow, 2004. Choras Michal, Human Ear Identification Based on Image Anlysis, in L. Rutkowski et al. (Eds): Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2004, Springer-Verlag LNAI 3070, 688-693, 2004. Choras Michal, Ear Biometrics Based on Geometrical Method of Feature Extraction, in F.J Perales and B.A. Draper (Eds.): Articulated Motion and Deformable Objects, AMDO 2004, Springer-Verlag LNCS 3179, 51-61, 2004.

Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

GEOMETRICAL FEATURE EXTRACTION

General Overview:
Contour Detection, Normalization Centroid Calculation 1st Algorithm Based on Concentric Circles 2nd Algorithm Based on Contour Tracing Feature Vectors Comparison and Classification

Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

CONCLUSIONS & WORK-IN-PROGRESS Aim: Developement of the automatic algorithm based on geometrical features for ear identification So far: Algorithm calculating properties of concentic circles originated in the ear contour image centriod So far: Algoritm based on contour tracing and extracting of the characteristic points Results: Good for easy ear images. Remarks: Heavily dependent on contour detection. Now additional segmentation is used to avoid hair, glasses and earrings contours. New algorithm of selecting only 8-10 longest contours is proposed.
Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification

Institute of Telecommunication Image Processing Group

CONCLUSIONS & WORK-IN-PROGRESS Work in progress: Algorithm calculating standard geometrical curve-features applied to 10 longest ear contours, New algorithm calculating triangle ratio of the longest contour, Classification to left and right ears based on longest contour direction, New algorithm calculating modified shape ratios of the 10 longest contours, Further developement of ear database 20 views for a person (5 orientations, 2 scales, 2 illuminations).
Micha Chora -Ear Biometrics for Human Identification