Gait flow image: A silhouette-based gait representation for human identification

In this paper, we propose a novel gait representation—gait flow image (GFI) for use in gait recognition. This representation will further improve recognition rates. The basis of GFI is the binary silhouette sequence. GFI is generated by using an optical flow field without constructing any model. The performance of the proposed representation was evaluated and compared with the other representations, such as gait energy image (GEI), experimentally on the USF data set. The USF data set is a public data set in which the image sequences were captured outdoors. The experimental results show that the proposed representation is efficient for human identification. The average recognition rate of GFI is better than that of the other representations in direct matching and dimensional reduction approaches. In the direct matching approach, GFI achieved an average identification rate 42.83%, which is better than GEI by 3.75%. In the dimensional reduction approach, GFI achieved an average identification rate 43.08%, which is better than GEI by 1.5%. The experimental result showed that GFI is stronger in resisting the difference of the carrying condition compared with other gait representations.