Deep Neural Network Architecture for Face Mask Detection Against COVID-19 Pandemic Using Pre-trained Exception Network

ABSTRACT

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by coronavirus. The COVID-19 virus spreads mostly through droplets of saliva or discharge from the nose when an infected person coughs or sneezes, so it is important to practice respiratory etiquette. The COVID-19 is spreading our community in a faster manner, stay safe by taking some simple precautions, such as physical distancing, wearing a mask, keeping rooms well ventilated, avoiding crowds, and cleaning hands. The appropriate use of wearing a mask is a normal part of our life. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. Genetic variants of SARS-CoV-2 have been emerging and circulating around the world throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. To minimize the risk of transmissions, the use of face masks or coverings has been recommended in public settings. Many countries and local jurisdictions encourage or mandate the use of face masks by members of the public to limit the spread of the virus. Masks are also strongly recommended for those who may have been infected and those taking care of someone who may have the disease. In this paper, novel face mask detection on masked face data set is done by using pretrained Xception, deep learning with depth wise separable convolution. The proposed method classifies from the given face image, mask is worn or not. The proposed method is tested and validated using the face mask data set obtained from Kaggle. This data set contains about 503 face images with mask and 503 images without mask. The experimental results show that the proposed face mask detection method significantly dominates other compared pretrained models. The results of the receiver operating characteristic curve and area under curve justify the relevance of the better results in favor of the proposed method. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.