The availability of high-performance and low-cost desktop computing systems and digital camera equipment has given rise to a public interest towards applications that include the visual identification of human individuals. Examples for such applications are surveillance, biometrical identification or computer-human interaction.

To that effect, research in biometrical technologies follows naturally. Above other methods, images of human faces offer a non-intrusive and easy-to-use means of identification. Although the recognition of faces is a problem that is effortlessly solved by human beings during their daily routine, it poses a challenge for researchers and scientists. Boundary conditions like illumination and occlusion, as well as pose and expression of an individual lead to intrapersonal variations that often exceed those between images of different persons under similar conditions.

In association with?Falcontrol Security GmbH?we are researching reliable face recognition algorithms by using Bayesian methods on infrared image data.