Enhanced Human Face Recognition Using LBPH Descriptor, Multi-KNN, and Back-Propagation Neural Network

Face recognition has become a fascinating field for researchers. The motivation behind the enormous interest in the topic is the need to improve the accuracy of many real-time applications. The complexity of the human face and the changes due to different effects make it more challenging to design as well as implement a powerful computational system for human face recognition. In this paper, we presented an enhanced approach to improve human face recognition using a back-propagation neural network (BPNN) and features extraction based on the correlation between the training images. A key contribution of this paper is the generation of a new set called the T-Dataset from the original training data set, which is used to train the BPNN. We generated the T-Dataset using the correlation between the training images without using a common technique of image density. The correlated T-Dataset provides a high distinction layer between the training images, which helps the BPNN to converge faster and achieve better accuracy. Data and features reduction are essential in the face recognition process, and researchers have recently focused on the modern neural network. Therefore, we used a local binary pattern histogram descriptor to prove that there is potential improvement even using traditional methods. We applied five distance measurement algorithms and then combined them to obtain the T-Dataset, which we fed into the BPNN. We achieved higher face recognition accuracy with less computational cost compared with the current approach by using reduced image features. We test the proposed framework on two small data sets, the YALE and AT&T data sets, as the ground truth. We achieved tremendous accuracy. Furthermore, we evaluate our method on one of the state-of-the-art benchmark data sets, Labeled Faces in the Wild (LFW), where we produce a competitive face recognition performance.