NEC Corporation announced today its development of a new face recognition engine that provides high-precision certification even when masks are worn.

NEC’s face recognition system operates by extracting feature points, such as the position, shape, and size of a subject's eyes, nose, and mouth, and matching and identifying detected faces. This engine focuses on areas surrounding an individual's eyes that are not covered by masks to extract and analyze characteristics. Once this engine detects the presence of a mask in a face image, the most appropriate facial recognition algorithm is used to extract and check the characteristics of each individual. This enables high-precision certification even when there is a mix of mask wearers and non-wearers.

NEC's internal evaluation using this engine confirmed a high recognition accuracy, with a rate of over 99.9% in 1:1 verification when masks of various colors and patterns were worn.

NEC aims to begin sales of the new engine with products that include "NEC Enhanced Video Analytics," which supports integrated solutions that combine face recognition with various image analysis functions, and "Bio-IDiom Services" (*3), which utilize a variety of face and other biometric information to provide multi-modal biometrics solutions. These products and services are the functions of the “NEC DX Platform" for integrating biometrics, video analysis, AI, and security technologies while providing comprehensive services from applications to networks.

NEC plans to apply this engine for demonstration tests from the end of September at NEC headquarters for a system that links face recognition and thermal cameras at walkthrough gates managing entrances and exits. Going forward, NEC will continue contributing to the revival of economic activities under the New Normal by providing solutions that utilize enhanced face recognition and help to promote public health, including entry and exit systems for companies, educational institutions, public facilities, commercial facilities, event venues and theme parks.

About NEC Corporation

NEC Corporation is one of the leading companies specialised in the integration of IT and network technologies while promoting the brand statement of “Orchestrating a brighter world.”