Fusion of Visual and Thermal Imagery for Illumination Invariant Face Recognition System

Visible light face recognition systems have been well researched and in controlled environments can reach excellent accuracy. Variation in lighting conditions results in performance degradation and illumination is the one of the major limitations in visible light face recognition systems. Using infrared facial images can provide a solution to this problem. Nearly invariant to changes in illumination, thermal IR imagery provides ability for recognition under all lighting conditions, including complete darkness. The system proposed in this paper takes advantages from both spectra and provides an effective algorithm for illumination invariant face recognition system.