EAR DATABASE DESCRIPTION

The database consists of 102 greyscale images (6 images for each of 17
subjects) in PGM format (see http://sourceforge.net/projects/netpbm).
This format is recognised by a number of popular graphics programs.
The file ALL.pgm contains a collage of all the images.

I created the ear images as follows:

  The images were captured in May 1995 with a greyscale CCD camera
  Kappa CF 4 (focal 16 mm, objective 25.5 mm, f-number 1.4-16) and a
  personal computer (with Intel 486 processor) using the program Vitec
  Multimedia Imager for VIDEO NT v1.52 Jan 15th 1995 for Windows. Each
  raw image had a resolution of 384x288 pixels and 256 greyscales.

  The camera was at around 1.5 m from the subject. Six views of the
  left profile from each subject were taken under uniform, diffuse
  lighting. Slight changes in the head position were encouraged from
  image to image.

  There were 17 different subjects, all students or professors at the
  Faculty of Informatics of the Technical University of Madrid, as well
  as some friends. This gave a total of 102 images.

  The raw images were then cropped and rotated for uniformity (to a
  ratio height:width of 1.6), and slightly brightened (gamma = 1.5
  approx.), using the xv program in a Linux system.

A fuller description of the database appears in:

  Carreira-Perpinan, M. A. (1995): "Compression neural networks for
  feature extraction: Application to human recognition from ear images"
  (in Spanish). MSc thesis, Faculty of Informatics, Technical University
  of Madrid, Spain.

Anyone is welcome to use this database for research purposes only. If
you do so, please cite my MSc thesis in your publications.

(C) 1995 Miguel A. Carreira-Perpinan

