A Study on Overcoming Disturbance Light using Polarization Filter and Performance Improvement of Face Recognition System

The performance of the facial recognition system is determined by many technical factors. Further, most of the technical factors have been realized or are still in continued research. The recognition rate has a great influence on performance not only by technical factors but also by other factors. However, researchers are trying to improve the recognition rate by focusing only on technical factors. The mechanism of recognizing is to compare a face image obtained by photography to an already stored face image and determine the score of the similarity. However, if the photographed image is damaged by external light, even a system with a good algorithm will fail to recognize it. Therefore, it is important to prevent the disturbance of light entering from the outside, so it should be blocked, but the camera will not work without light. Thus, it is proposed that a method to secure the external light but block the disturbance of light that affects photography. A method of blocking disturbance light is to use a polarization filter. There are three polarization methods: circular polarization, linear polarization, and elliptical polarization. In this paper, an experiment was performed to overcome disturbance of light using only a circularly polarized filter. In addition, a lighting system that reproduces disturbance light was provided for the experiment, and light of varying intensities and angles was installed to affect the face recognition camera. As a result of actual application, it was determined that a very improved recognition performance in various disturbance light environments.