It's yet another leap forward for facial-recognition technology: A computer vision research groups has automated micro-expression detection.
Micro-expressions are very short involuntary facial expressions that reveal emotions people try to hide. They can be used for lie detection and are actively used by trained officials at U.S. airports to detect suspicious behavior. For example, a terrorist trying to conceal a plan to commit suicide would very likely show a very short expression of intense anguish.
An interesting point about micro-expressions is that the human recognition accuracy is very low. Even highly trained human detectors are notoriously inaccurate. This makes an automatic computer detector very attractive.
“To the best of our knowledge, we are the first computer scientists to succeed in recognizing micro-expressions,” said Professor Matti Pietikäinen, leader of the Machine Vision Group at University of Oulu in a press release. “In addition, our system’s accuracy compares well with humans”.
Because micro-expressions are very rapid (only 1/3 to 1/25 seconds), current computer vision methods cannot reliably recognize them using a normal camera. The team solved the problem by introducing an interpolation method. They then used the Oulu group’s state-of-the-art Local Binary Pattern method to characterize micro-expressions numerically.
The result? Facial rec that gets up close and personal ... and may save the day in certain applications.