Eye Sclera for Fair Face Image Quality Assessment

TL;DR

This paper proposes using the sclera region of the eye as a demographic-agnostic area for fair face image quality assessment, ensuring equitable face recognition performance across diverse skin tones.

Contribution

It introduces the sclera as a novel, demographic-agnostic region for face image quality assessment, promoting fairness in face recognition systems.

Findings

Sclera region effectively measures exposure issues in face images.

Sclera-based assessment is independent of skin tone variations.

Sclera provides comparable quality assessment utility to traditional skin-tone-dependent measures.

Abstract

Fair operational systems are crucial in gaining and maintaining society's trust in face recognition systems (FRS). FRS start with capturing an image and assessing its quality before using it further for enrollment or verification. Fair Face Image Quality Assessment (FIQA) schemes therefore become equally important in the context of fair FRS. This work examines the sclera as a quality assessment region for obtaining a fair FIQA. The sclera region is agnostic to demographic variations and skin colour for assessing the quality of a face image. We analyze three skin tone related ISO/IEC face image quality assessment measures and assess the sclera region as an alternative area for assessing FIQ. Our analysis of the face dataset of individuals from different demographic groups representing different skin tones indicates sclera as an alternative to measure dynamic range, over- and under-exposure of face using sclera region alone. The sclera region being agnostic to skin tone, i.e., demographic factors, provides equal utility as a fair FIQA as shown by our Error-vs-Discard Characteristic (EDC) curve analysis.