10 - Ear recognition

Ear

The ear has a structure that is not random, but well-defined just like the face:

• the external border (helix);
• the protrusion (anti-helix) running inside and parallel to the external border;
• the lobe;
• the u-shaped socket known as intertragic notch (tacca intratragica) between the entry of the inner ear (meatus) and the lobe

• less deatils requiring lower resolution
• static
• still relatively limited to forensics

Features extraction

Ear localization:

• Localization of points of interests
  • possible by Neural Networks (trained)
  • select a set of points based on Iannarelli
• general object recognition
  • the usual matrixes (training set, positive and negative samples…)
• geometric 3d methods
  • reconstruction of the ear using 3D

Ear recognition

• Iannarelli
  • localize points using Region of Interests
  • 12 measurements are performed starting from helix
  • accuracy is given by the central point
• Voronoi
  • partition the plane based on closeness to seed points in a specific subset of the plane
  • very sensitive to pose and illumination
• Gaussian forces
  • all forces around the ear, and they will stretch the ear forming paths