Researchers from Intel have published a study examining whether AI can recognise people’s faces using thermal imaging.
Thermal imaging is often used to protect privacy because it obscures personally identifying details such as eye colour. In some places, like medical facilities, it’s often compulsory to use images which obscure such details.
AI is opening up many new possibilities so Intel’s researchers set out to determine whether thermal imaging still offers a high degree of privacy.
Intel’s team used two sets of data sets:
- The first set, known as SC3000-DB, was created using a Flir ThermaCam SC3000 infrared camera. The data set features 766 images of 40 volunteers (21 women and 19 men) who each sat in front of a camera for two minutes.
- The second set, known as IRIS, was created by the Visual Computing and Image Processing Lab at Oklahoma State University. It features 4,190 images collected by 30 people and differs from the first set in that it contains various head angles and expressions.
Each image from the data sets were first cropped to only contain each person’s face.