Local histogram specification for face recognition under varying lighting conditions

High frequency illumination and low frequency face features bring difficulties for most of the state-of-the-art face image preprocessors. In this paper, we propose two methods based on Local Histogram Specification (LHS) to preprocess face images under varying lighting conditions. The proposed methods are able to significantly remove both the low and high frequency parts of illumination on face images, as well as enhance face features lying in the low frequency part. Specifically, we first apply a high-pass filter on a face image to filter the low frequency illumination. Then, local histograms and local histogram statistics are learned from normal lighting images. In our first method, LHS is applied on the entire image. By contrast, in the second method, the regions contain high frequency illumination and weak face features on a face image are identified by local histogram statistics, before LHS is applied on these regions to eliminate high frequency illumination and enhance weak face features. Experimental results on the CMU PIE, Extended Yale B and CAS-PEAL-R1 databases demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our methods.     

不可控光照下的LNMCP人脸识别方法

局部二值模式（LBP）在人脸识别领域取得了显著成效,但由于没有考虑像素之间的对比度,导致部分重要纹理特征被丢弃。采用粗粒度分区算法求取各人脸分块对比度值域区间的动态阈值点,并借鉴LMCP算法思想利用上述阈值点分别对各人脸分块编码,得到结合光照变化信息的局部非线性多层对比度特征LNMCP作为人脸特征。实验结果表明,该方法识别率高,特别是在户外人脸库上提高了2.91%,方法在不可控光照变化环境下具有极强的自适应性。     

可变光照条件下的人脸识别

主要解决人脸识别中因光照变化导致误识或者拒识的问题。使用DOG（高斯差分变换）对原始人脸图像样本集（A）进行处理,将滤波后的人脸图像样本集（B）加入到原始样本集（A）中,采用了新的方法将样本集A和B进行融合,则既对极端光照条件下人脸图像进行了矫正,又不影响正常光照条件下的人脸识别。在分类阶段,引入了SRC（Sparse Representation Classification）分类器代替传统分类器,提升了在低错误接收率下的识别率,改善因光照剧烈变换而导致的无法识别或者误识的情况。在公开人脸库Yale-B、CMU-PIE以及ORL上的实验结果表明,该方法在不同光照条件下可以提高识别率,改善拒识和误识情况。     

Line-based face recognition under varying pose

Much research in human face recognition involves fronto-parallel face images, constrained rotations in and out of the plane, and operates under strict imaging conditions such as controlled illumination and limited facial expressions. Face recognition using multiple views in the viewing sphere is a more difficult task since face rotations out of the imaging plane can introduce occlusion of facial structures. In this paper, we propose a novel image-based face recognition algorithm that uses a set of random rectilinear line segments of 2D face image views as the underlying image representation, together with a nearest-neighbor classifier as the line matching scheme. The combination of 1D line segments exploits the inherent coherence in one or more 2D face image views in the viewing sphere. The algorithm achieves high generalization recognition rates for rotations both in and out of the plane, is robust to scaling, and is computationally efficient. Results show that the classification accuracy of the algorithm is superior compared with benchmark algorithms and is able to recognize test views in quasi-real-time     

结合DCT和WT的多分类器融合的光照人脸识别

为进一步提高各种光照条件下的人脸识别精度,提出了一种将光照补偿和光照不变特征提取相结合的人脸识别方法。算法先应用对数域DCT进行光照补偿;然后,用三次样条二进小波分解提取一个低频子图和三个对光照变化鲁棒的边缘细节子图;接着,用二维线性判别分析进行特征降维并构造四个分量分类器;最后,通过多分类器融合规则进行融合分类。该文算法在CAS-PEAL人脸库光照子集上的实验达到了83.91%的识别率,在YaleB人脸库上则实现了100%的识别率,实验结果证明了该文算法对光照变换具有较好的鲁棒性。     

Acquiring linear subspaces for face recognition under variable lighting

Previous work has demonstrated that the image variation of many objects (human faces in particular) under variable lighting can be effectively modeled by low-dimensional linear spaces, even when there are multiple light sources and shadowing. Basis images spanning this space are usually obtained in one of three ways: a large set of images of the object under different lighting conditions is acquired, and principal component analysis (PCA) is used to estimate a subspace. Alternatively, synthetic images are rendered from a 3D model (perhaps reconstructed from images) under point sources and, again, PCA is used to estimate a subspace. Finally, images rendered from a 3D model under diffuse lighting based on spherical harmonics are directly used as basis images. In this paper, we show how to arrange physical lighting so that the acquired images of each object can be directly used as the basis vectors of a low-dimensional linear space and that this subspace is close to those acquired by the other methods. More specifically, there exist configurations of k point light source directions, with k typically ranging from 5 to 9, such that, by taking k images of an object under these single sources, the resulting subspace is an effective representation for recognition under a wide range of lighting conditions. Since the subspace is generated directly from real images, potentially complex and/or brittle intermediate steps such as 3D reconstruction can be completely avoided; nor is it necessary to acquire large numbers of training images or to physically construct complex diffuse (harmonic) light fields. We validate the use of subspaces constructed in this fashion within the context of face recognition.     

基于样例学习的任意光照下的人脸3D重建方法

待匹配的人脸图像与数据库中的原型图像之间的光照差异是自动人脸识别的主要瓶颈问题之一。提出了一种基于样例学习方式的3D人脸形状重建方法,既可以生成任意光照条件下的数据库中人脸图像,也可以对待识别图像进行重新光照,合成无阴影的图像。该方法在建立人脸数据库时利用光度立体技术分离人脸图像的纹理和形状信息,并用多面体模型在最小二乘意义下恢复其3D信息并更新法向量场以克服阴影误差,从而可以利用计算机图形学的方法合成任意光照条件下和小角度姿态改变时的人脸图像;在识别时采用数据库中3D数据的线性组合形式对输入图像建模,以估计其3D信息,从而可以重新照明。在YaleB人脸数据库上的实验表明,在建立3D人脸数据库后,该方法可以快速恢复输入单幅图像中人脸的3D信息,并生成任意光照条件的该人脸图像。     

Multiscale facial structure representation for face recognition under varying illumination

Facial structure of face image under lighting lies in multiscale space. In order to detect and eliminate illumination effect, a wavelet-based face recognition method is proposed in this paper. In this work, the effect of illuminations is effectively reduced by wavelet-based denoising techniques, and meanwhile the multiscale facial structure is generated. Among others, the proposed method has the following advantages: (1) it can be directly applied to single face image, without any prior information of 3D shape or light sources, nor many training samples; (2) due to the multiscale nature of wavelet transform, it has better edge-preserving ability in low frequency illumination fields; and (3) the parameter selection process is computationally feasible and fast. Experiments are carried out upon the Yale B and CMU PIE face databases, and the results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves satisfactory recognition rates under varying illumination conditions.     

Local Centre of Mass Face for face recognition under varying illumination

Multimedia Tools and Applications - In this work we propose a novel method to extract illumination insensitive features for face recognition called local centre of mass face (LCMF). In this LCMF...     

LMCP:用于变化光照下人脸识别的LBP改进方法

LBP算子是在人脸识别和纹理分析领域比较成功的一种方法,但是由于没有考虑像素值之间的对比度,因而丢弃掉了重要的纹理特征。提出了一种LMCP方法,解决了LBP方法的这个缺点。该方法先通过预处理,将光照变化控制在一定范围内,然后求得局部区域中心像素点和邻居像素点之间的对比度值,并将其最大值和最小值之间的值域划分为若干个层次,将每个对比度值映射到某个层次上,再使用LBP类似方法获得若干个数值组合而成的LMCP特征值。此外,还使用了统计映射的方法进行降维。实验结果证明了LMCP方法比LBP方法更加有效。     

Car make and model recognition under limited lighting conditions at night

Car make and model recognition (CMMR) has become an important part of intelligent transport systems. Information provided by CMMR can be utilized when license plate numbers cannot be identified or fake number plates are used. CMMR can also be used when a certain model of a vehicle is required to be automatically identified by cameras. The majority of existing CMMR methods are designed to be used only in daytime when most of the car features can be easily seen. Few methods have been developed to cope with limited lighting conditions at night where many vehicle features cannot be detected. The aim of this work was to identify car make and model at night by using available rear view features. This paper presents a one-class classifier ensemble designed to identify a particular car model of interest from other models. The combination of salient geographical and shape features of taillights and license plates from the rear view is extracted and used in the recognition process. The majority vote from support vector machine, decision tree, and k-nearest neighbors is applied to verify a target model in the classification process. The experiments on 421 car makes and models captured under limited lighting conditions at night show the classification accuracy rate at about 93 %.     

Variable lighting face recognition using discrete wavelet transform

This paper presents a new discrete wavelet transform (DWT) based illumination normalization approach for face recognition under varying lighting conditions. Our method consists of three steps. Firstly, DWT-based denoising technique is employed to detect the illumination discontinuities in the detail subbands. And the detail coefficients are updated with using the obtained discontinuity information. Secondly, a smooth version of the input image is obtained by applying the inverse DWT on the updated wavelet coefficients. Finally, multi-scale reflectance model is presented to extract the illumination invariant features. The merit of the proposed method is it can preserve the illumination discontinuities when smoothing image. Thus it can reduce the halo artifacts in the normalized images. Moreover, only one parameter involved and the parameter selection process is simple and computationally fast. Experiments are carried out upon the Yale B and CMU PIE face databases, and the results demonstrate the proposed method can achieve satisfactory recognition rates under varying illumination conditions.     

Total variation models for variable lighting face recognition

In this paper, we present the logarithmic total variation (LTV) model for face recognition under varying illumination, including natural lighting conditions, where we rarely know the strength, direction, or number of light sources. The proposed LTV model has the ability to factorize a single face image and obtain the illumination invariant facial structure, which is then used for face recognition. Our model is inspired by the SQI model but has better edge-preserving ability and simpler parameter selection. The merit of this model is that neither does it require any lighting assumption nor does it need any training. The LTV model reaches very high recognition rates in the tests using both Yale and CMU PIE face databases as well as a face database containing 765 subjects under outdoor lighting conditions.     

Face recognition under varying illumination based on a 2D face shape model

This paper proposes a novel illumination compensation algorithm, which can compensate for the uneven illuminations on human faces and reconstruct face images in normal lighting conditions. A simple yet effective local contrast enhancement method, namely block-based histogram equalization (BHE), is first proposed. The resulting image processed using BHE is then compared with the original face image processed using histogram equalization (HE) to estimate the category of its light source. In our scheme, we divide the light source for a human face into 65 categories. Based on the category identified, a corresponding lighting compensation model is used to reconstruct an image that will visually be under normal illumination. In order to eliminate the influence of uneven illumination while retaining the shape information about a human face, a 2D face shape model is used. Experimental results show that, with the use of principal component analysis for face recognition, the recognition rate can be improved by 53.3% to 62.6% when our proposed algorithm for lighting compensation is used.     

Multiple nose region matching for 3D face recognition under varying facial expression

An algorithm is proposed for 3D face recognition in the presence of varied facial expressions. It is based on combining the match scores from matching multiple overlapping regions around the nose. Experimental results are presented using the largest database employed to date in 3D face recognition studies, over 4,000 scans of 449 subjects. Results show substantial improvement over matching the shape of a single larger frontal face region. This is the first approach to use multiple overlapping regions around the nose to handle the problem of expression variation.     

Comparing and combining lighting insensitive approaches for face recognition

Face recognition under changing lighting conditions is a challenging problem in computer vision. In this paper, we analyze the relative strengths of different lighting insensitive representations, and propose efficient classifier combination schemes that result in better recognition rates. We consider two experimental settings, wherein we study the performance of different algorithms with (and without) prior information on the different illumination conditions present in the scene. In both settings, we focus on the problem of having just one exemplar per person in the gallery. Based on these observations, we design algorithms for integrating the individual classifiers to capture the significant aspects of each representation. We then illustrate the performance improvement obtained through our classifier combination algorithms on the illumination subset of the PIE dataset, and on the extended Yale-B dataset. Throughout, we consider galleries with both homogenous and heterogeneous lighting conditions.     

Face recognition under varying illumination

To eliminate the effects of illumination variation, the conventional approaches firstly produce a compensation-based face image under standard illumination from the input image and then match the image with the face templates in a database. This method is not inapplicable to the input image with large illumination variation. Therefore, a novel method for varying illumination conditions is proposed. Firstly, the quotient image method is improved. Then, the nine basis images of each subject are generated by the improved quotient image method. Thirdly, one new image of each subject under the same lighting conditions with an input image is synthesized by the corresponding basis images. Finally, the synthetic images and the input image are projected to PCA plane to fulfill the recognition task. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can eliminate the effects of illumination variation and have a high recognition rate in the illumination conditions with remarkable changes.     

一种复杂光照下的人脸识别算法

为提高光照变化下的人脸识别率,提出了一种基于局部对比增强（LCE）和局部相位量化（LPQ）的人脸识别方法。采用面部对称的思想结合LCE算法对受不均匀光照的人脸图像进行光照补偿;利用LPQ算子对增强后的图片进行标记,并用分块离散余弦变换（DCT）进行降维;分块计算LPQ直方图序列作为人脸图像的特征描述向量,送入最近邻分类器进行分类识别。通过Yale B和CAS_PEAL数据库上的实验,证实了所提方法的有效性。