Does Deep Learning-Based Super-Resolution Help Humans With Face Recognition?

Frontiers in Signal Processing

Erik Velan¹  Marco Fontani¹  Martino Jerian¹  Sergio Carrato² 

[1] Amped Software, Trieste, Italy;Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy;

关键词: super-resolution;    deep learning;    face identification;    face recognition;    face enhancement;    AI;   

DOI  :  10.3389/frsip.2022.854737

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The last decade witnessed a renaissance of machine learning for image processing. Super-resolution (SR) is one of the areas where deep learning techniques have achieved impressive results, with a specific focus on the SR of facial images. Examining and comparing facial images is one of the critical activities in forensic video analysis; a compelling question is thus whether recent SR techniques could help face recognition (FR) made by a human operator, especially in the challenging scenario where very low resolution images are available, which is typical of surveillance recordings. This paper addresses such a question through a simple yet insightful experiment: we used two state-of-the-art deep learning-based SR algorithms to enhance some very low-resolution faces of 30 worldwide celebrities. We then asked a heterogeneous group of more than 130 individuals to recognize them and compared the recognition accuracy against the one achieved by presenting a simple bicubic-interpolated version of the same faces. Results are somehow surprising: despite an undisputed general superiority of SR-enhanced images in terms of visual appearance, SR techniques brought no considerable advantage in overall recognition accuracy.

【 授权许可】

Unknown