On-the-move heterogeneous face recognition in frequency and spatial domain using sparse representation

Heterogeneity of a probe image is one of the most complex challenges faced by researchers and implementers of current surveillance systems. This is due to existence of multiple cameras working in different spectral ranges in a single surveillance setup. This paper proposes two different approaches including spatial sparse representations (SSR) and frequency sparse representation (FSR) to recognize on-the-move heterogeneous face images with database of single sample per person (SSPP). SCface database, with five visual and two Infrared (IR) cameras, is taken as a benchmark for experiments, which is further confirmed using CASIA NIR-VIS 2.0 face database with 17580 visual and IR images. Similarity, comparison is performed for different scenarios such as, variation of distances from a camera and variation in sizes of face images and various visual and infrared (IR) modalities. Least square minimization based approach for finding the solution is used to match face images as it makes the recognition process simpler. A side by side comparison of both the proposed approaches with the state-of-the-art, classical, principal component analysis (PCA), kernel fisher analysis (KFA) and coupled kernel embedding (CKE) methods, along with modern low-rank preserving projection via graph regularized reconstruction (LRPP-GRR) method, is also presented. Experimental results suggest that the proposed approaches achieve superior performance.