Periocular biometrics: databases, algorithms and directions
Fernando Alonso-Fernandez Josef Bigun
Periocular biometrics has been established as an independent modality due to
concerns on the performance of iris or face systems in uncontrolled conditions.
Periocular refers to the facial region in the eye vicinity, including eyelids,
lashes and eyebrows. It is available over a wide range of acquisition
distances, representing a trade-off between the whole face (which can be
occluded at close distances) and the iris texture (which do not have enough
resolution at long distances). Since the periocular region appears in face or
iris images, it can be used also in conjunction with these modalities. Features
extracted from the periocular region have been also used successfully for
gender classification and ethnicity classification, and to study the impact of
gender transformation or plastic surgery in the recognition performance. This
paper presents a review of the state of the art in periocular biometric
research, providing an insight of the most relevant issues and giving a
thorough coverage of the existing literature. Future research trends are also
briefly discussed.