Face recognition is the process of identifying or verifying the identity of an individual based upon the facial features of the individual. Automated face recognition has received a lot of attention over the last 15 years. The vast majority of research and development in automated face recognition has focused on adults. This work will evaluate the performance of automated face recognition of non-adults. Non-adults are those persons younger than 18 years of age. The changes of the cranium and thus, the outward appearance of the face, alters significantly from birth to approximately age 16. This period is composed of the growth and development stages. This work will investigate standard and commercial face recognition systems against a set of longitudinal images during the growth and development stages. It is an established fact that face recognition performance degrades against aging, i.e. when the enrolled face is temporally displaced by the probe face. This fact has been established in adult faces; however, the question has not been adequately investigated for non-adult periods, i.e. children from birth to adulthood. Our research has established this is a challenging problem.

Recommended Citation: Sodomsky M., Ricanek K., Hua L., Cummings J., (2014). An Evaluation of Longitudinal Face Recognition Performance Throughout the Growth and Development Stages. UNCW MS CSIS Proceedings. V. 8 , N. 1 .