The Effect of Wearing a Mask on Face Recognition Performance: an Exploratory Study

TL;DR

This study investigates how wearing face masks impacts face recognition performance, using a new database and testing three top systems to understand the challenges in masked face recognition scenarios.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new database with masked and unmasked faces and evaluates the performance of three face recognition systems under masked conditions.

Findings

Masked faces reduce recognition accuracy

Performance varies across different systems

New database enables further research in masked face recognition

Abstract

Face recognition has become essential in our daily lives as a convenient and contactless method of accurate identity verification. Process such as identity verification at automatic border control gates or the secure login to electronic devices are increasingly dependant on such technologies. The recent COVID-19 pandemic have increased the value of hygienic and contactless identity verification. However, the pandemic led to the wide use of face masks, essential to keep the pandemic under control. The effect of wearing a mask on face recognition in a collaborative environment is currently sensitive yet understudied issue. We address that by presenting a specifically collected database containing three session, each with three different capture instructions, to simulate realistic use cases. We further study the effect of masked face probes on the behaviour of three top-performing face recognition systems, two academic solutions and one commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) system.