Facial Recognition System with Compact Optical Parallel Correlator Using Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser Array Module

The design and trial fabrication of a two-dimensional light-source module is presented for application to an optical parallel correlator for facial recognition. The light-source module is composed of a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser array and a multilevel zone-plate array as a collimating lens. This module is about 1/10 the size of the conventional light source module and the optical parallel correlator has a size of 16.1×13×23 cm3, weight of 4.4 kg, and a throughput time of 19 faces/s. In an experimental evaluation of the system through one-to-one correlation using a database of 300 front facial images, the false match and false non-match rates were less than 1%. The optical system presented here is therefore robust to a variety of changes in facial expressions and is highly applicable in security systems.