Barcoding Technologies for the Tasks of the Facial Biometrics: State of the Art and New Solutions

Subject of Research. Application of barcoding technologies in the tasks of facial biometrics is posed and discussed. We analyze the achievements and estimate the shortcomings of existing solutions and examples of barcode creation according to the face images and the features extracted by them. Method. The ways of the problem implementation are determined and new solutions are presented based on linear (Code 128) and two-dimensional (QR) barcodes, as well as their color variants. The composition and volume of data are considered being used in the facial biometry and related applications: medicine, criminalistics and forensic-medical examination. Among these data there are face images, as well as sets of anthropometric points and additional information to them, information about the phenotype of face images (FI) and gender, and, finally, documentary information. Main Results. We have shown the results of these data “recording and transferring” within the framework of various barcode layouts, as well as the results of their reading and ways of hiding from reading. The proposed color barcodes are defined as “BIO Code 128” and “BIO QR-code”. While graphical display and computer memory record, they may be viewed as, colored raster images that carry information about the face in each layer. At this, documentary information may be read directly from such color images by standard barcode scanners, and the rest of the information (face image itself, its anthropometric, accompanying parameters) is read and restored after their decomposition into layers R, green and blue. Practical Relevance. The layout variants of the “BIO Code 128” and “BIO QR-code” barcodes and the programs for their generation (written in the MATLAB package environment) may be used in the further studies of the barcoding problem in the tasks of the facial biometrics and its applications. © 2018, Pleiades Publishing, Ltd.