Thermal Face Recognition Using Local Patterns

The aim of this article is to compare the performance of well-known visible recognition methods but using the thermal spectrum. Specifically, the work considers two local-matching based methods for face recognition commonly used in visible spectrum: Local Binary Pattern (LBP) and Local Derivative Pattern (LDP). The methods are evaluated and compared using the UCHThermalFace database, which includes evaluation methodology that considers real-world conditions. The comparative study results shown that, contrary to what happens in the visible spectrum, the LBP method obtains the best results from the thermal face recognition. On the other hand, LDP results show that it is not an appropriate descriptor for face recognition systems in the thermal spectrum.