Preferred Spatial Frequencies for Human Face Processing Are Associated with Optimal Class Discrimination in the Machine

Psychophysical studies suggest that humans preferentially use a narrow band of low spatial frequencies for face recognition. Here we asked whether artificial face recognition systems have an improved recognition performance at the same spatial frequencies as humans. To this end, we estimated recogni...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Keil, Matthias S., Lapedriza i Garcia, Àgata, Masip, David, Vitrià i Marca, Jordi
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2008
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de la UB
OAI Identifier:oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/33684
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2445/33684
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Processament d'imatges
Visió per ordinador
Processament digital d'imatges
Image processing
Computer vision
Digital image processing
Descripción
Sumario:Psychophysical studies suggest that humans preferentially use a narrow band of low spatial frequencies for face recognition. Here we asked whether artificial face recognition systems have an improved recognition performance at the same spatial frequencies as humans. To this end, we estimated recognition performance over a large database of face images by computing three discriminability measures: Fisher Linear Discriminant Analysis, Non-Parametric Discriminant Analysis, and Mutual Information. In order to address frequency dependence, discriminabilities were measured as a function of (filtered) image size. All three measures revealed a maximum at the same image sizes, where the spatial frequency content corresponds to the psychophysical found frequencies. Our results therefore support the notion that the critical band of spatial frequencies for face recognition in humans and machines follows from inherent properties of face images, and that the use of these frequencies is associated with optimal face recognition performance.