Potential of Infrared Spectrum in Face Recognition: An art of review from 1991 to 2013

The face recognition (FR) is growing as the major research area among the researchers in the fields of computer vision and pattern recognition because of the wide range of applications in the fields of commercial and law enforcement. By continuing research, the rapid improvements are achieved and illustrating benefits in the different fields including pattern recognition, image processing, computer graphics and physiology. Traditional FR systems based on visible spectrum images in electromagnetic spectrum have faces the different challenges due to illumination, pose variation, expression changes, as well as facial disguises, and all of these limitations decrease the performance of face recognition in terms of accuracy. To overcome all these limitations, the other spectrum such as infrared (IR) of electromagnetic spectrum can be used which has achieved the great significance because of reducing the several limitations arise in the visual spectrum.  So it leads to the continuous research in this area for face recognition. The use of hyperspectral images in IR also have become a most research direction by minimizing the several limitations arises in visual spectrum. This paper presents a detailed and time to time review of the literature on face recognition in infrared spectrum. The significance of hyperspectral images for face recognition in infrared spectrum is also studied and reviewed.