Incorrect Facemask-Wearing Detection Using Convolutional Neural Networks with Transfer Learning

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a worldwide catastrophe. Its impact, not only economically, but also socially and in terms of human lives, was unexpected. Each of the many mechanisms to fight the contagiousness of the illness has been proven to be extremely important. One of the most important mechanisms is the use of facemasks. However, the wearing the facemasks incorrectly makes this prevention method useless. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and especially facial recognition techniques can be used to detect misuses and reduce virus transmission, especially indoors. In this paper, we present an intelligent method to automatically detect when facemasks are being worn incorrectly in real-time scenarios. Our proposal uses Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) with transfer learning to detect not only if a mask is used or not, but also other errors that are usually not taken into account but that may contribute to the virus spreading. The main problem that we have detected is that there is currently no training set for this task. It is for this reason that we have requested the participation of citizens by taking different selfies through an app and placing the mask in different positions. Thus, we have been able to solve this problem. The results show that the accuracy achieved with transfer learning slightly improves the accuracy achieved with convolutional neural networks. Finally, we have also developed an Android-app demo that validates the proposal in real scenarios.

Automated summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact globally, highlighting the importance of correct facemask usage as a key preventive measure. Artificial Intelligence and facial recognition techniques can be utilized to detect facemask misuse and reduce virus transmission effectively, with a proposed intelligent method in this study.