Optical Correlator for Face Recognition Using Collinear Holographic System

We have constructed an optical correlator for fast face recognition. Recognition rate can be markedly improved, if reference images are optically recorded and can be accessed directly without converting them to digital signals. In addition, a large capacity of optical storage allows us to increase the size of the reference database. We propose a new optical correlator that integrates the optical correlation technology used in our face recognition system and collinear holography. From preliminary correlation experiments using the collinear optical set-up, we achieved excellent performance of high correlation peaks and low error rates. We expect an optical correlation of 10 µs/frame, i.e., 100,000 face/s when applied to face recognition. This system can also be applied to various image searches.