18CSE357T – BIOMETRICS
Unit –2 : Session –8 : SLO -1
SRM Institute of Science and Technology 1
Ear Recognition
Ear features have been used for many years in
the forensic science of recognition
Ear is a stable biometric and does not very with
age.
Ear has all the properties that a biometric
trait should have, i.e. uniqueness,
universality, permanence and collectability
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 3
Ear does not have a completely random
structure. It has standard parts as other
biometric traits like face
Unlike human face, ear has no expression
changes, make-up effects and more over the color
is constant through out the ear.
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 4
Fig 1: Anatomy of the Ear
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 5
Image Acquisition
Pre-Processing and Edge
Detection
Feature Extraction
Two-Stage Classification
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 6
The side face images have been acquired in the
same lightening conditions.
All Images taken from with a distance of 15- 20
cms between the ear and camera
The image should be carefully taken such
that outer ear shape is preserved.
The less erroneous the outer shape is the
more accurate the results are.
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 7
Fig 2: A side face image acquired
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 8
Selecting the ROI portion of the image by
segmentation.
Color image is then converted to grayscale
image
Fig 3: Cropped Gray scale image
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 9
Edge detection and binarization is done using the
well known canny edge detector.
If w is the width of the image in pixel and h is the
height of the image in pixel, the canny edge
detector takes as input an array w × h of gray
values and sigma (standard deviation)
Output a binary image with a value 1 for
edge pixels, i.e., the pixel which constitute
an edge and a value 0 for all other pixels.
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 10
Fig 4: Grayscale image and its corresponding edge detected binary image
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 11
Using adaptive weighted median filter this
kind of noise can be removed
Fig 5: image with and without noise
01/28/13 Imran Hossain Faruk 12
Here features extracted all are angles
Features are divided into two vectors
First features is found using the outer shape
of the ear.
Second feature vector is found using all other
edges
To find the angels, the terms max-line and
normal line are used
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 13
Max-line: it is the longest line that can be drawn
with both its endpoints on the edges of the ear.
The length of a line is measured in terms of
Euclidean distance
If there are more than one line, features
corresponding to each max-line are to be
extracted
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 14
Normal Line: lines which are perpendicular to
the max-line and which divide the max- line into
(n+1) equal parts, where n is a positive integer.
Fig 5: Image with max-line and normal line
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 15
The max-line m, normal line l1,l2,l3,…..,ln
named from top to bottom.
Center of the max-line is c. P1,P2,P3,……,Pn are
the points where the outer edge and the
normal lines intersect.
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 16
First feature vector(FV1): it can be defined by.
FV1 = [θ1, θ2, θ3,…., θn]
Fig 6: image showing the angel θ1
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 17
Second feature vector(FV2): all the points where
the edges of the ear and normal line intersect
except the outer most edge
Fig 7: image showing second feature vector and angel respectively
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 18
Classification is the task of finding a match for a
given query image.
Here classification is performed in two
stages.
In first stage the first feature vector is used
while in second stage second feature vector
is used.
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 19
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 20
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 21
A given query image is first tested against all the images in the
database using first feature vector
• Only the images are matched in the first stage are
considered for second stage of classification
• As the size of the FV1 is less, that is n (number of normal line) so
only n comparison is needed for the first stage classification.
• In the second stage classification m*n comparison are
required, assuming m points for each normal line.
• If the classification is single stage, than total comparison
• required are I*((n)+(m*n)), where I is the number of images in
the database
• If the classification is divided into two stage the
comparison would be I*n+I1*(m*n)
• where I1 is the number of image that are matched with respect to the
first feature vector.
• Saved computation is (I – I1)*(m*n).
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 22
Ear recognition can used for both
identification and verification purpose.
Since some portion of ear is kept covert by hair so
it is very difficult to get the complete image of ear.
Since its uniqueness is moderate we can not
rely on it completely.
Imran Hossain Faruk 01/28/13 23
