A Comparative Study of Image Descriptors in Recognizing Human Faces Supported by Distributed Platforms

Face recognition is one of the emergent technologies that has been used in many applications. It is a process of labeling pictures, especially those with human faces. One of the critical applications of face recognition is security monitoring, where captured images are compared to thousands, or even millions, of stored images. The problem occurs when different types of noise manipulate the captured images. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge by proposing an innovative framework for face recognition based on various descriptors, including the following: Color and Edge Directivity Descriptor (CEDD), Fuzzy Color and Texture Histogram Descriptor (FCTH), Color Histogram, Color Layout, Edge Histogram, Gabor, Hashing CEDD, Joint Composite Descriptor (JCD), Joint Histogram, Luminance Layout, Opponent Histogram, Pyramid of Gradient Histograms Descriptor (PHOG), Tamura. The proposed framework considers image set indexing and retrieval phases with multi-feature descriptors. The examined dataset contains 23,707 images of different genders and ages, ranging from 1 to 116 years old. The framework is extensively examined with different image filters such as random noise, rotation, cropping, glow, inversion, and grayscale. The indexer’s performance is measured based on a distributed environment based on sample size and multiprocessors as well as multithreads. Moreover, image retrieval performance is measured using three criteria: rank, score, and accuracy. The implemented framework was able to recognize the manipulated images using different descriptors with a high accuracy rate. The proposed innovative framework proves that image descriptors could be efficient in face recognition even with noise added to the images based on the outcomes. The concluded results are as follows: (a) the Edge Histogram could be best used with glow, gray, and inverted images; (b) the FCTH, Color Histogram, Color Layout, and Joint Histogram could be best used with cropped images; and (c) the CEDD could be best used with random noise and rotated images.