Multimodal Recognition Method based on Ear and Profile Face Feature Fusion

The performance of ear recognition is influenced by pose variation. For the similar position of ear and profile face, a multimodal recognition method is proposed based on the feature fusion of ear and profile face information. A model for ear and profile face feature fusion and recognition is built. The Log-Gabor features of ear and profile face are first extracted separately, and two features are integrated into a combined feature after two Log-Gabor features are standardized. Then combined feature is mapped to kernel space to fuse further, and acquired stronger discriminant feature for classification by kernel Fisher discriminant analysis (KFDA). The minimum distance classifier is finally used in recognition. Experimental results on the profile face database of Notre Dame University show that the fused method improves the recognition rate of pose variation, and the performance of multimodal recognition is better than unimodal recognition using either ear or profile face alone. The method of ear and profile face feature fusion and recognition is effective and robust for the pose variation.