Beyond the Visible: Deep Learning-Powered Thermal Face Recognition

As a significant biometric identification technology, face recognition (FR) is extensively utilized in identity verification and security surveillance systems. Current research predominantly relies on high-definition RGB camera-based methods. However, these methods are susceptible to various factors such as lighting conditions and disguises. This paper proposes a low-cost face recognition solution called Warm- Face based on thermal array sensors. By leveraging the thermal radiation of the face, we overcome the disturbances caused by lighting conditions and disguises, thereby achieving rapid and highly accurate face recognition. However, face recognition based on thermal array sensors still faces two major challenges. Firstly, in complex scenarios, thermal noise interference can lead to the thermal radiation characteristics of the target face becoming indistinguishable from the background. Secondly, due to their large network parameter sizes and high computational complexity, recognition models face challenges in simultaneously achieving low latency and high accuracy. WarmFace extracts facial regions through a semantic segmentation-based approach, effectively reducing the impact of background interference on recognition performance. Additionally, in the recognition model, we utilize a series of linear transformations instead of convolution operations to process the intrinsic features of images, which reduces redundancy in feature maps while preserving the essential information. Extensive real-world experiments validate the effectiveness of WarmFace in various environments, achieving an average recognition accuracy of 98.6%.