A Person Identification Method Using a Top-View Head Image from an Overhead Camera

In this paper, we describe a novel image-based person identification task. Conventional face-based person identification methods have a low tolerance for occluded situations, such as overlapping of people in an image. We focus on an image from an overhead camera. Using the overhead camera reduces restrictions on the installation location of the camera and solves the problem of occluded images. First, our method identifies a person area in a captured image by using background subtraction. Then, it extracts four features from the area: (1) body size, (2) hair color, (3) hairstyle, and (4) hair whorl. We apply the four features to the AdaBoost algorithm. Experimental results show the effectiveness of our method.