Identification and/or verification by a consensus network using sparse parametric representations of biometric images

A computer readable storage medium storing a program of instructions executable by a machine to perform a method comprising:

• receiving image data;
• running the image data through a neural network, the neural network producing a vector representation of the image data;
• creating random sparse sampling masks;
• masking the vector representation of the image data with each of the random sparse sampling masks, the masking generating corresponding sparsely sampled vectors;
• transmitting the sparsely sampled vectors to nodes of a consensus network, wherein a sparsely sampled vector of the sparsely sampled vectors is transmitted to a node of the consensus network;
• receiving votes from the nodes of the consensus network;
• determining whether a consensus is achieved in the votes;
• and
• responsive to determining that the consensus is achieved, providing at least one of identification and verification of the image data.

A system comprising:

• at least one hardware processor coupled to a computer network;
• a memory device coupled to the at least one hardware processor;
• and
• a trained neural network stored on the memory device;
• the at least one hardware processor operable to perform at least:
• receive image data;
• run the image data through the neural network, the neural network producing a vector representation of the image data;
• create random sparse sampling masks;
• mask the vector representation of the image data with each of the random sparse sampling masks, the masking generating corresponding sparsely sampled vectors;
• transmit the sparsely sampled vectors to nodes of a consensus network, wherein a sparsely sampled vector of the sparsely sampled vectors is transmitted to a node of the consensus network;
• receive votes from the nodes of the consensus network;
• determine whether a consensus is achieved in the votes;
• and
• responsive to determining that the consensus is achieved, provide at least one of identification and verification of the image data.