Introduction to USTB ear image databases

1. IMAGE DATABASE I
Purpose: Supporting academic research of ear recognition
Subject: Students and teachers from the department of Information Engineering, USTB. The total
number of volunteers is 60.
Date: Jul 2002 —Aug 2002
Condition: The right ear is photographed with digital camera.
Detail:
Every volunteer is photographed three different images. They are normal frontal image,
frontal image with trivial angle rotation and image under different lighting condition. Each of
them has 256 gray scales. Images had already experienced rotation and shearing, but they were
without illumination compensation. Some images of the database are shown in the figure 1, in
which three images in series belong to a single person.

Fig.1 Some examples of the Image Database I

2. IMAGE DATABASE II
Purpose: Supporting the academic research of ear recognition methods, particularly under lighting
and angle variations, as well as ear image pre-processing methods.
Subject: Students and teachers from the department of Information Engineering, USTB. The total
number of volunteers is 77.
Date: Nov 2003-Jan 2004
Condition:
The subject’s head in right hand view is photographed by CCD camera. The distance between
subject and camera is fixed to 2 meters. In terms of illumination variations and angle variations,
we adopt methods illustrated in the figure 2 and figure 3 respectively. In the figures, S represents
the subject, C represents the camera and Lx represents the lamp (L1 represents the one right above
the subject and L2 and L3 have certain angle changes from the subject).
S

L1

2m

L2 L3

1.5m

Fig.2 The position of lamp under illumination variation

 +30 degrees
S
-30 degrees

L1

2m

L2 L3

1.5m

Fig.3 The experiment condition of angle changes

Detail:
Every volunteer is photographed four images. They are profile image, two images with
angle variation and one with illumination variation. Each image is 24-bit true color image and
300*400 pixels. The first image and the fourth one are both profile image but under different
lighting. The second and the third one have the same illumination condition with the first while
they have separately rotated +30 degree and -30 degree with the first one. Thus, the main purpose
of the image database is to support the research about ear recognition under illumination variations
and angle variations. Some images of the database are shown in the figure 4, in which four images
in series belong to a single person.

Fig.4 Some examples of the Image Database II

3. IMAGE DATABASE III
Purpose: Supporting the research concerning about steps of ear recognition system including ear
detection, the robustness of recognition methods under depth variation, ear recognition under
partial occlusion and multi-modal biometric feature recognition based on the fusion of information
from ear and face.
Subject: Students and teachers from the department of Information Engineering, USTB. The total
number of volunteers is 79.
Date: 20 Nov 2004- 30 Dec 2004.
Condition:
All images are right side profile full images which are photographed with color CCD camera
under the white background and constant lighting. The distance between camera and subject is 1.5
meters. The resolution of image is 768*576, 24-bit true color. Define the angle when CCD camera
is perpendicular to ear as 0 degree, which we call profile side.
(1) Regular ear images: Right rotation and left rotation (some images under the condition are
demonstrated in figure 5)
Right rotation: Under this condition, the subject rotates from 0 degree to 60 degree with
variable intervals to the right side. Specifically, the angles are 0 degree, 5 degree, 10 degree, 15
degree, 20 degree, 25 degree, 30 degree, 40 degree, 45 degree and 60 degree. Each angle is
photographed two images and thus the sum of images is 22, labeled by 1-22.
Left rotation: It is the same with the condition of turning right but it only rotates to 45
degrees. Therefore, it only contains 18 images, labeled by 1-18.

Fig.5 Some examples of the Image Database III

(2) Face images
Face images are stored in the left rotation directory. Subjects labeled from 1 to 31 are
photographed two frontal images. We label them as 19 and 20. Besides, except for frontal view,
subjects labeled from 32 to 79 are separately photographed two images in four other views, 15
degree rotation to right, 30 degree rotation to right, 15 degree rotation to left and 30 degree
rotation to left. Thus, each one has 10 face images and is labeled by 19-28.
(3) Ear images with partial occlusion
The sum of ear images with partial occlusion is 144, including 24 subjects, and each one has 6
images respectively. They consist of three conditions: partly occlusion (disturbance from some
hair), trivial occlusion (little hair) and regular occlusion (natural occlusion). Some examples are
shown in the figure 6.

Fig.6 Ear images with partial occlusion