[Submitted on 9 Jul 2026]
Title:A Step Forward Towards Trustworthy Risk-Aware Facial Retrieval (RA-FR)
View a PDF of the paper titled A Step Forward Towards Trustworthy Risk-Aware Facial Retrieval (RA-FR), by Muhammad Emmad Siddiqui and 1 other authors
View PDF HTML (experimental)
Abstract:Facial image retrieval in unconstrained surveillance environments is a high-stakes challenge where missing a subject of interest -- a single false negative -- is simply not an option. Despite near-perfect performance on curated benchmarks, current recognition systems falter under real-world domain shifts such as low resolution, motion blur, and uncontrolled illumination (e.g., SCFace). Addressing this reliability gap, we propose Risk-Aware Facial Retrieval (RA-FR), a framework that moves beyond fixed Top-$k$ retrieval to adaptive set generation, guaranteeing ground truth inclusion within a user-specified risk level ($\alpha$) and confidence level ($1 - \delta$). Our approach integrates three core contributions: (1) reducing aleatoric uncertainty via a hybrid blind face restoration technique coupling Latent Consistency Models (InterLCM) and DiffBIR; (2) extracting discriminative, restoration-robust features via self-supervised DINOv1 ViT-B with GGeM pooling; and (3) employing conformal prediction with Hoeffding's inequality to dynamically calibrate retrieval set sizes based on query uncertainty. On the IMFDB benchmark, it consistently satisfies a 5% risk target with an average retrieval set size of approximately 10 images. By unifying domain-specific restoration, robust representation learning, and provable decision rules, RA-FR offers a pipeline that makes facial retrieval in surveillance both reliable and auditable. The code is available at: this https URL.
Comments: Accepted at the 28th International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR 2026). Extended version with additional citations and expanded sections
Subjects:
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV)
ACM classes: I.2.10; I.4.8; I.4.9
Cite as: arXiv:2607.16279 [cs.CV]
(or arXiv:2607.16279v1 [cs.CV] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.16279
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
Submission history
From: Muhammad Emmad Siddiqui [view email] [v1] Thu, 9 Jul 2026 14:55:45 UTC (16,702 KB)
Full-text links:
Access Paper:
View a PDF of the paper titled A Step Forward Towards Trustworthy Risk-Aware Facial Retrieval (RA-FR), by Muhammad Emmad Siddiqui and 1 other authors
View PDF
HTML (experimental)
TeX Source
view license
Current browse context:
cs.CV
new | recent | 2026-07
Change to browse by:
cs
References & Citations
NASA ADS
Google Scholar
Semantic Scholar
Loading...
Data provided by:
Bibliographic Tools
Bibliographic and Citation Tools
Bibliographic Explorer Toggle
Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers Toggle
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps Toggle
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite.ai Toggle
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)
Code, Data, Media
Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article
alphaXiv Toggle
alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
Links to Code Toggle
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub Toggle
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
GotitPub Toggle
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Huggingface Toggle
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
ScienceCast Toggle
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)
Demos
Demos
Replicate Toggle
Replicate (What is Replicate?)
Spaces Toggle
Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)
Spaces Toggle
TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)
Related Papers
Recommenders and Search Tools
Link to Influence Flower
Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
Core recommender toggle
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)
Author
Venue
Institution
Topic
About arXivLabs
arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators
arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.
Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.
Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.
Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)