Hello , i'm a computer science engineer , i have a good knowledge in image processing and video analysis. i have opportunities to work on previous projects as object detection and tracking, object classification and recognition.
based on your description, I find that your need is to develop an application that can detect and recognize a face in the video stream (thermal and infrared). To recognize and identify the detected face we can use referecnce images formed using nn or SVM (with good classification precision).
I suggest to use openbr and opencv library, to develop our solution.
I invite you to contact to discuss further details.