# Beyond Spatial Explanations: Explainable Face Recognition in the Frequency Domain

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.11941 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11941/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 55 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Jul 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [Adversarial Examples Are Not Bugs, They Are Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02175/) (2019)
- [Joint Face Detection and Alignment using Multi-task Cascaded Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.02878/) (2016)
- [RISE: Randomized Input Sampling for Explanation of Black-box Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07421/) (2018)
- [Score-CAM: Score-Weighted Visual Explanations for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.01279/) (2019)
- [AdaFace: Quality Adaptive Margin for Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.00964/) (2022)
- [CurricularFace: Adaptive Curriculum Learning Loss for Deep Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00288/) (2020)
- [High Frequency Component Helps Explain the Generalization of Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.13545/) (2019)
- [Cross-Age LFW: A Database for Studying Cross-Age Face Recognition in Unconstrained Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.08197/) (2017)
- [WebFace260M: A Benchmark Unveiling the Power of Million-Scale Deep Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04098/) (2021)
- [Partial FC: Training 10 Million Identities on a Single Machine](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.05222/) (2020)
- [ElasticFace: Elastic Margin Loss for Deep Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.09416/) (2021)
- [Demographic Bias in Biometrics: A Survey on an Emerging Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.02488/) (2020)
- [A Comprehensive Study on Face Recognition Biases Beyond Demographics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01592/) (2021)
- [Face Recognition: Too Bias, or Not Too Bias?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.06483/) (2020)
- [Towards Transferable Adversarial Attack against Deep Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05790/) (2020)
- [AdvFaces: Adversarial Face Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.05008/) (2019)
- [MorDIFF: Recognition Vulnerability and Attack Detectability of Face Morphing Attacks Created by Diffusion Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.01843/) (2023)
- [Adv-Attribute: Inconspicuous and Transferable Adversarial Attack on Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06871/) (2022)
- [Biometrics: Trust, but Verify](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.06625/) (2021)
- [On Low-Resolution Face Recognition in the Wild: Comparisons and New Techniques](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.11529/) (2018)
- [How Good is ChatGPT at Face Biometrics? A First Look into Recognition, Soft Biometrics, and Explainability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.13641/) (2024)
- [SYN-MAD 2022: Competition on Face Morphing Attack Detection Based on Privacy-aware Synthetic Training Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.07337/) (2022)
- [Surpassing Human-Level Face Verification Performance on LFW with GaussianFace](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1404.3840/) (2014)
- [xCos: An Explainable Cosine Metric for Face Verification Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.05383/) (2020)
- [DuetFace: Collaborative Privacy-Preserving Face Recognition via Channel Splitting in the Frequency Domain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.07340/) (2022)
- [Privacy-Preserving Face Recognition Using Random Frequency Components](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10461/) (2023)
- [Pixel-Level Face Image Quality Assessment for Explainable Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.11001/) (2021)
- [Explainable Model-Agnostic Similarity and Confidence in Face Verification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13735/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [50 Years of Automated Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.24247/) (2025)
- [EXPL-FR: Explaining Face Recognition Models via Vision-Language Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.21486/) (2026)
- [Vision Language Model Fusion for Explainable Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.24430/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The need for more transparent face recognition (FR), along with other visual-based decision-making systems has recently attracted more attention in research, society, and industry. The reasons why two face images are matched or not matched by a deep learning-based face recognition system are not obvious due to the high number of parameters and the complexity of the models. However, it is important for users, operators, and developers to ensure trust and accountability of the system and to analyze drawbacks such as biased behavior. While many previous works use spatial semantic maps to highlight the regions that have a significant influence on the decision of the face recognition system, frequency components which are also considered by CNNs, are neglected. In this work, we take a step forward and investigate explainable face recognition in the unexplored frequency domain. This makes this work the first to propose explainability of verification-based decisions in the frequency domain, thus explaining the relative influence of the frequency components of each input toward the obtained outcome. To achieve this, we manipulate face images in the spatial frequency domain and investigate the impact on verification outcomes. In extensive quantitative experiments, along with investigating two special scenarios cases, cross-resolution FR and morphing attacks (the latter in supplementary material), we observe the applicability of our proposed frequency-based explanations.