Human identification at a distance: The impact of image quality and image restoration techniques on human face matching performance
Date
2016
Authors
Calleja, Joseph
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Thesis
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Abstract
The suitability of surveillance for facial identification has been questioned given the low
quality of such imagery often captured at a distance. The Defence Science and Technology
(DST) Group have developed the Zephyrus normalised cross-correlation (NCC) restoration
technique to enhance long-range images, and demonstrated an improvement in facial
recognition (FR) algorithm performance. However, whether this technique could improve
human face matching performance was not known. This study aimed to understand the
impact of image quality and the Zephyrus NCC image restoration technique on human face
matching performance during the conduct of a simultaneous one-to-one face matching task.
Participants (N = 50) from the University of Adelaide and the general public examined 120
facial image pairs in a repeated measures design, and were asked if they were of the same or
different people. The quality of one image (the target image) varied in each pair, and was
either a passport-quality, restored surveillance, or an unrestored surveillance image. The
other image (the exemplar image) was always of passport-quality. Face matching decisions
with passport-quality target images were the fastest, most accurate, and most confident,
overall. However, decisions with restored surveillance target images were the slowest, least
accurate, and least confident, overall. This may have been due to the restricted number of
restored images accessible, and/or the distortion of spatial frequencies necessary to support
facial identification. Future research could implement an objective image quality measure,
assess the performance of many commercial FR algorithms alongside human performance,
and explore various restoration techniques for long-range imagery.
School/Discipline
School of Psychology
Dissertation Note
Thesis (B.Sc.(Hons)) -- University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, 2016
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