Confidence factor weighted Gaussian function induced parallel fuzzy rank-level fusion for inference and its application to face recognition

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel approach for inference using fuzzy rank-level fusion and explores it application to face recognition using multiple biometric representations. Multiple representations of single biometric (trait) aim to increase the reliability or acceptance of a biometric system, as it exploits the underlying essential characteristics provided by different sensors. In this paper, we propose a new scheme for generating fuzzy ranks induced by a Gaussian function based on the confidence of a classifier. In contrast to the conventional ranking, this fuzzy ranking reflects some associations among the outputs (confidence factors) of a classifier. These fuzzy ranks, yielded by multiple representations of a face image, are fused weighted by the corresponding confidence factors of the classifier to generate the final ranks while recognizing a face. In many real-world applications, where multiple traits of a person are unavailable, the proposed method is highly effective. However, it can easily be extended to multimodal biometric systems utilizing multiple classifiers. The experimental results using different feature vectors of a face image employing different classifiers show that the proposed method can significantly improve recognition accuracy as compared to those from individual feature vectors and as well as some commonly used rank-level fusion methods.