DFIC: Towards a balanced facial image dataset for automatic ICAO compliance verification

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Gonçalves, Nuno, Nunes, Diogo, Guerra, Carla, Marcos, João
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Gonçalves, Nuno
Nunes, Diogo
Guerra, Carla
Marcos, João
author_facet Gonçalves, Nuno
Nunes, Diogo
Guerra, Carla
Marcos, João
contents Ensuring compliance with ISO/IEC and ICAO standards for facial images in machine-readable travel documents (MRTDs) is essential for reliable identity verification, but current manual inspection methods are inefficient in high-demand environments. This paper introduces the DFIC dataset, a novel comprehensive facial image dataset comprising around 58,000 annotated images and 2706 videos of more than 1000 subjects, that cover a broad range of non-compliant conditions, in addition to compliant portraits. Our dataset provides a more balanced demographic distribution than the existing public datasets, with one partition that is nearly uniformly distributed, facilitating the development of automated ICAO compliance verification methods. Using DFIC, we fine-tuned a novel method that heavily relies on spatial attention mechanisms for the automatic validation of ICAO compliance requirements, and we have compared it with the state-of-the-art aimed at ICAO compliance verification, demonstrating improved results. DFIC dataset is now made public (https://github.com/visteam-isr-uc/DFIC) for the training and validation of new models, offering an unprecedented diversity of faces, that will improve both robustness and adaptability to the intrinsically diverse combinations of faces and props that can be presented to the validation system. These results emphasize the potential of DFIC to enhance automated ICAO compliance methods but it can also be used in many other applications that aim to improve the security, privacy, and fairness of facial recognition systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_10985
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle DFIC: Towards a balanced facial image dataset for automatic ICAO compliance verification
Gonçalves, Nuno
Nunes, Diogo
Guerra, Carla
Marcos, João
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
I.4
Ensuring compliance with ISO/IEC and ICAO standards for facial images in machine-readable travel documents (MRTDs) is essential for reliable identity verification, but current manual inspection methods are inefficient in high-demand environments. This paper introduces the DFIC dataset, a novel comprehensive facial image dataset comprising around 58,000 annotated images and 2706 videos of more than 1000 subjects, that cover a broad range of non-compliant conditions, in addition to compliant portraits. Our dataset provides a more balanced demographic distribution than the existing public datasets, with one partition that is nearly uniformly distributed, facilitating the development of automated ICAO compliance verification methods. Using DFIC, we fine-tuned a novel method that heavily relies on spatial attention mechanisms for the automatic validation of ICAO compliance requirements, and we have compared it with the state-of-the-art aimed at ICAO compliance verification, demonstrating improved results. DFIC dataset is now made public (https://github.com/visteam-isr-uc/DFIC) for the training and validation of new models, offering an unprecedented diversity of faces, that will improve both robustness and adaptability to the intrinsically diverse combinations of faces and props that can be presented to the validation system. These results emphasize the potential of DFIC to enhance automated ICAO compliance methods but it can also be used in many other applications that aim to improve the security, privacy, and fairness of facial recognition systems.
title DFIC: Towards a balanced facial image dataset for automatic ICAO compliance verification
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
I.4
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.10985