Face mask detection in COVID-19: a strategic review

With the outbreak of the Coronavirus Disease in 2019, life seemed to be had come to a standstill. To combat the transmission of the virus, World Health Organization (WHO) announced wearing of face mask as an imperative way to limit the spread of the virus. However, manually ensuring whether people are wearing face masks or not in a public area is a cumbersome task. The exigency of monitoring people wearing face masks necessitated building an automatic system. Currently, distinct methods using machine learning and deep learning can be used effectively. In this paper, all the essential requirements for such a model have been reviewed. The need and the structural outline of the proposed model have been discussed extensively, followed by a comprehensive study of various available techniques and their respective comparative performance analysis. Further, the pros and cons of each method have been analyzed in depth. Subsequently, sources to multiple datasets are mentioned. The several software needed for the implementation are also discussed. And discussions have been organized on the various use cases, limitations, and observations for the system, and the conclusion of this paper with several directions for future research.