Validating the correct wearing of protection mask by taking a selfie:
design of a mobile application ”CheckYourMask” to limit the spread of
COVID-19
Abstract
In a context of a virus that is transmissive by sputtering, wearing
masks appear necessary to protect the wearer and to limit the
propagation of the disease. Currently, we are facing the 2019-20
coronavirus pandemic. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an
infectious disease with first symptoms similar to the flu. COVID-19
appeared first in China and very quickly spreads to the rest of the
world. The COVID-19 contagiousness is known to be high by comparison
with the flu. In this paper, we propose a design of a mobile application
for permitting to everyone having a smartphone and being able to take a
picture to verify that his/her protection mask is correctly positioned
on his/her face. Such application can be particularly useful for people
using face protection mask for the first time and notably for children
and old people. The designed method exploits Haar-like feature
descriptors to detect key features of the face and a decision-making
algorithm is applied. Experimental results show the potential of this
method in the validation of the correct mask wearing. To the best of our
knowledge, our work is the only one that currently proposes a mobile
application design “CheckYourMask” for validating the correct wearing
of protection mask.