Real-Time Occluded Face Identification Using Deep Learning

One of the most difficult aspects of face identification is face occlusion. Face occlusion is when anything is placed over the face, for example, a mask. Masks occlude multiple important facial features, like the chin, lips, nose, and facial edges. Face identification becomes challenging when important facial features are occluded. Using one of the deep learning algorithms, YOLOv5, this work tries to identify the face of someone whose face is occluded by a mask in real-time. A special program is being created to test the effectiveness of the YOLOv5 algorithm. 14 people's data were registered, and each person had 150 images used for training, validation, and testing. The images used are regular faces and mask-occluded faces. Nine distinct configurations of epoch and batch sizes were used to train the model. Then, during the testing phase, the best-performing configuration was chosen. Images and real-time input were used for testing. The highest possible accuracy of image identification is 100%, whereas the maximum accuracy of real-time identification is 64%. It was found during the testing that the brightness of the room has an influence on the performance of YOLOv5. Identifying individuals becomes more challenging when there are significant changes in brightness.