Toward a practical face recognition system: robust alignment and illumination by sparse representation

Many classic and contemporary face recognition algorithms work well on public data sets, but degrade sharply when they are used in a real recognition system. This is mostly due to the difficulty of simultaneously handling variations in illumination, image misalignment, and occlusion in the test image. We consider a scenario where the training images are well controlled and test images are only loosely controlled. We propose a conceptually simple face recognition system that achieves a high degree of robustness and stability to illumination variation, image misalignment, and partial occlusion. The system uses tools from sparse representation to align a test face image to a set of frontal training images. The region of attraction of our alignment algorithm is computed empirically for public face data sets such as Multi-PIE. We demonstrate how to capture a set of training images with enough illumination variation that they span test images taken under uncontrolled illumination. In order to evaluate how our algorithms work under practical testing conditions, we have implemented a complete face recognition system, including a projector-based training acquisition system. Our system can efficiently and effectively recognize faces under a variety of realistic conditions, using only frontal images under the proposed illuminations as training.     

基于有效光照估计的复杂光照人脸识别

基于光照估计的光照不变量提取是提高复杂光照人脸识别性能的一种有效方法。以往算法仅考虑光照缓慢变化特性从人脸图像中估计光照,无法获取准确的光照和光照不变量。综合考虑图像的成像原理、光照缓慢变化特性和复杂照明环境,结合图像融合和平滑滤波,提出一种有效的人脸图像光照估计、光照不变量提取方法。所提算法能较好地处理阴影边缘问题,提取含有丰富面部细节特征、更接近于人脸本征的光照不变量。复杂光照Yale B+和CAS-PEAL-R1人脸库上的实验结果表明所提算法具有高效性。     

基于光照归一化分块完备LBP特征的人脸识别

针对复杂光照条件下的人脸识别,提出了一种基于光照归一化分块完备局部二值模式（B-CLBP）特征的人脸识别算法。该方法对人脸图像进行光照归一化预处理,对处理后的人脸图像进行B-CLBP特征提取,融合成B-CLBP直方图,根据最近邻准则进行分类识别。在Extended Yale B人脸库上的实验结果表明,所提算法可以有效提高复杂光照条件下的人脸识别率。     

Face recognition under arbitrary illumination using illuminated exemplars

Recently, the importance of face recognition has been increasingly emphasized since popular CCD cameras are distributed to various applications. However, facial images are dramatically changed by lighting variations, so that facial appearance changes caused serious performance degradation in face recognition. Many researchers have tried to overcome these illumination problems using diverse approaches, which have required a multiple registered images per person or the prior knowledge of lighting conditions. In this paper, we propose a new method for face recognition under arbitrary lighting conditions, given only a single registered image and training data under unknown illuminations. Our proposed method is based on the illuminated exemplars which are synthesized from photometric stereo images of training data. The linear combination of illuminated exemplars can represent the new face and the weighted coefficients of those illuminated exemplars are used as identity signature. We make experiments for verifying our approach and compare it with two traditional approaches. As a result, higher recognition rates are reported in these experiments using the illumination subset of Max-Planck Institute face database and Korean face database.     

一种基于EMD的人脸图像光照问题处理方法

鉴于经验模态分解（EMD）算法的无参数特性和基于数据驱动的自适应分析,从EMD算法筛选过程中插值点和差值算法选取的角度出发,提出了一种标准EMD的改进算法。用改进的EMD算法分解需要识别的人脸图像,得到从整体上有效消除了光照变化影响的原人脸图像的重构图像,并将重构图像用于识别。通过在Yale B人脸库上的实验结果表明,将提出的光照处理方法应用到人脸识别中可以取得较好的效果。     

Illumination invariant face recognition

The appearance of a face will vary drastically when the illumination changes. Variations in lighting conditions make face recognition an even more challenging and difficult task. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to handle the illumination problem. Our method can restore a face image captured under arbitrary lighting conditions to one with frontal illumination by using a ratio-image between the face image and a reference face image, both of which are blurred by a Gaussian filter. An iterative algorithm is then used to update the reference image, which is reconstructed from the restored image by means of principal component analysis (PCA), in order to obtain a visually better restored image. Image processing techniques are also used to improve the quality of the restored image. To evaluate the performance of our algorithm, restored images with frontal illumination are used for face recognition by means of PCA. Experimental results demonstrate that face recognition using our method can achieve a higher recognition rate based on the Yale B database and the Yale database. Our algorithm has several advantages over other previous algorithms: (1) it does not need to estimate the face surface normals and the light source directions, (2) it does not need many images captured under different lighting conditions for each person, nor a set of bootstrap images that includes many images with different illuminations, and (3) it does not need to detect accurate positions of some facial feature points or to warp the image for alignment, etc.     

复杂光照条件下的人脸预处理算法

为了提高光照条件下的人脸识别正确率,提出一种复杂光照条件下的人脸预处理算法。对人脸图像进行局部增强处理,用双边滤波对图像亮度进行估计,采用Gamma校正补偿图像亮度估计产生的损失,将反射分量与亮度估计结果融合获得效果更优的人脸图像,并用K近邻算法建立分类器对人脸进行识别。在Yale、PIE和AR人脸库仿真结果表明,该算法提高了光照条件下的人脸识别正确率,其性能优于当前典型人脸识别算法。     

基于多特征融合的复杂光照人脸识别

提取人脸图像光照不变量是提高不完备训练样本人脸识别光照鲁棒性的一个有效途径。以往算法分别从不同角度提取人脸图像的高频特征作为光照不变量不能提取完整的人脸本征,具有一定的局限性。从特征级和决策级融合的角度提出了一种基于多特征融合的复杂光照人脸识别方法。所提算法能发挥不同光照不变量的自身优势,明显提高复杂光照人脸识别的光照鲁棒性。Yale B+和非控光照人脸库的实验结果表明所提算法的有效性。     

任意光照下人脸图像的低维光照空间表示

本文提出一种不同光照条件下人脸图像的低维光照空间表示方法.这种低维光照空间表示不仅能够由输入图像估计其光照参数，而且能够由给定的光照条件生成虚拟的人脸图像.利用主成分分析和最近邻聚类方法得到9个基本点光源的位置，这9个基本点光源可以近似人脸识别应用中几乎所有的光照条件.在这9个基本光源照射下的9幅人脸基图像构成了低维人脸光照空间，它可以表示不同光照条件下的人脸图像，结合光照比图像方法，可以生成不同光照下的虚拟人脸图像.本文提出的低维光照空间的最大优点是利用某个人脸的图像建立的光照空间，可以用于不同的人脸.图像重构和不同光照下的人脸识别实验说明了本文算法的有效性.     

一种基于同态滤波器与Radon变换的光照不变人脸识别方法

为了减轻光照变化对人脸识别精度的影响,提出了一种结合同态滤波器与Radon变换的人脸识别方法。首先用高斯同态滤波器对人脸图像进行处理,然后进行Radon变换,将变换得到的Radon特征用2DPCA/2DLDA进行降维。在Yale和PIE人脸数据库上的实验结果表明,提出的方法在光照变化较大时,其识别精度远高于2DPCA和2DLDA,是一种高精度的人脸识别算法。     

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.     

基于线性子空间和商图像理论的人脸光照补偿

光照是影响人脸识别率的主要因素,它已成为人脸识别技术发展的瓶颈。根据商图像理论,在所构造的低维训练集上对待识别的图像进行光照条件估计,通过加光和去光两种方法,实现了光照补偿的目的,并通过识别实验验证了其补偿效果。     

基于Armlets的人脸光照补偿

提出了一种用于非均匀光照条件下人脸识别的光照补偿算法。该算法通过在对数域计算2维Armlets多小波变换来实现人脸光照补偿,然后直接在对数域进行人脸识别。在Yale B人脸库中与其他光照补偿算法进行了比较,实验结果表明,该方法的平均误识率仅为0.18%,优于现有的其他算法。     

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.     

From few to many: illumination cone models for face recognitionunder variable lighting and pose

We present a generative appearance-based method for recognizing human faces under variation in lighting and viewpoint. Our method exploits the fact that the set of images of an object in fixed pose, but under all possible illumination conditions, is a convex cone in the space of images. Using a small number of training images of each face taken with different lighting directions, the shape and albedo of the face can be reconstructed. In turn, this reconstruction serves as a generative model that can be used to render (or synthesize) images of the face under novel poses and illumination conditions. The pose space is then sampled and, for each pose, the corresponding illumination cone is approximated by a low-dimensional linear subspace whose basis vectors are estimated using the generative model. Our recognition algorithm assigns to a test image the identity of the closest approximated illumination cone. Test results show that the method performs almost without error, except on the most extreme lighting directions     

Homomorphic filtering based illumination normalization method for face recognition

The appearance of a face image is severely affected by illumination conditions that will hinder the automatic face recognition process. To recognize faces under varying lighting conditions, a homomorphic filtering-based illumination normalization method is proposed in this paper. In this work, the effect of illumination is effectively reduced by a modified implementation of homomorphic filtering whose key component is a Difference of Gaussian (DoG) filter, and the contrast is enhanced by histogram equalization. The resulted face image is not only reduced illumination effect but also preserved edges and details that will facilitate the further face recognition task. Among others, our method has the following advantages: (1) neither does it need any prior information of 3D shape or light sources, nor many training samples thus can be directly applied to single training image per person condition; and (2) it is simple and computationally fast because there are mature and fast algorithms for the Fourier transform used in homomorphic filter. The Eigenfaces method is chosen to recognize the normalized face images. Experimental results on the Yale face database B and the CMU PIE face database demonstrate the significant performance improvement of the proposed method in the face recognition system for the face images with large illumination variations.     

光照变化条件下的人脸识别技术研究

为了提高光照变化条件下的人脸识别率,针对Retinex算法处理人脸光照图像时易产生“光晕”难题,提出了一种基于Mean-Shift滤波的Retinex算法,并应用于人脸识别中的光照预处理。对人脸图像进行非线性增强;利用Mean-Shift滤波代替高斯滤波对光照估计,解决传统Retinex算法中存在的“光晕”难题。采用Yale B人脸库对算法性能进行测试,结果表明,该算法能够很好地抑制“光晕”现象的发生,具有光照鲁棒性,提高了人脸的识别率。     

Shadow compensation and illumination normalization of face image

This study proposes a novel shadow compensation and illumination normalization method under uncontrolled light conditions. First, we decompose the face image into two images based on the Lambertian theory, which corresponds to the large- and small-scale features, respectively. Then, the threshold minimum-and-maximum filter on the small-scale features to smooth the shadow edge is applied. After that, the robust Principal Component Analysis and some normalization methods are used to remove the shadow and normalize the face image on the large-scale features. In the end, the normalized face image is obtained by combining both results from the large- and small-scale features. Our main contribution is that a more reliable shadow compensation approach is found, which can get a better normalized face image. Experiments on the Extended Yale B, CMU-PIE and FRGC 2.0 (Face Recognition Grand Challenge) face datasets show that not only the recognition performance is significantly improved, but also much better visual quality is achieved.     

OptiFuzz: a robust illumination invariant face recognition system and its implementation

Vision-based human face detection and recognition are widely used and have been shown to be effective in normal illumination conditions. Under severe illumination conditions, however, it is very challenging. In this paper, we address the effect of illumination on the face detection and the face recognition problem by introducing a novel illumination invariant method, called OptiFuzz. It is an optimized fuzzy-based illumination invariant method to solve the effect of illumination for photometric-based human face recognition. The rule of the Fuzzy Inference System is optimized by using a genetic algorithm. The Fuzzy’s output controls an illumination invariant model that is extended from Land’s reflectance model. We test our method by using Yale B Extended and CAS-PEAL face databases to represent the offline experiments, and several videos are recorded at our campus to represent the online indoor and outdoor experiments. Viola–Jones face detector and mutual subspace method are employed to handle the online face detection and face recognition experiments. Based on the experimental results, we can show that our algorithm outperforms the existing and the state-of-the-art methods in recognizing a specific person under variable lighting conditions with a significantly improved computation time. Other than that, using illumination invariant images is also effective in improving the face detection performance.     

可变光照条件下的人脸图像识别

对于人脸图像识别中光照变化的影响,传统的解决方法是对待识别图像进行光照补偿,先使它成为标准光照条件下的图像,然后和模板图像匹配来进行识别。为了提高在光照条件大范围变化时,人脸图像的识别率,提出了一种新的可变光照条件下的人脸图像识别方法。该方法首先利用在9个基本光照方向下分别获得的9幅图像来构成人脸光照特征空间,再通过这个光照特征空间,将图像库中的人脸图像变换成与待识别图像具有相同光照条件的图像,并将其作为模板图像;然后利用特征脸方法进行识别。实验结果表明,这种方法不仅能够有效地解决人脸识别中由于光照变化影响所造成的识别率下降的问题,而且对于光照条件大范围变化的情况,也可以得到比较高的正确识别率。