A Siamese neural network (sometimes called a twin neural network) is an artificial neural network that uses the same weights while working in tandem on two different input vectors to compute comparable output vectors.[1][2][3][4] Often one of the output vectors is precomputed, thus forming a baseline against which the other output vector is compared. This is similar to comparing fingerprints but can be described more technically as a distance function for locality-sensitive hashing.[citation needed]
It is possible to build an architecture that is functionally similar to a twin network but implements a slightly different function. This is typically used for comparing similar instances in different type sets.[citation needed]
Uses of similarity measures where a twin network might be used are such things as recognizing handwritten checks, automatic detection of faces in camera images, and matching queries with indexed documents. The perhaps most well-known application of twin networks are face recognition, where known images of people are precomputed and compared to an image from a turnstile or similar. It is not obvious at first, but there are two slightly different problems. One is recognizing a person among a large number of other persons, that is the facial recognition problem. DeepFace is an example of such a system.[4] In its most extreme form this is recognizing a single person at a train station or airport. The other is face verification, that is to verify whether the photo in a pass is the same as the person claiming he or she is the same person. The twin network might be the same, but the implementation can be quite different.