Virtual illumination grid for correction of uncontrolled illumination in facial images

Face recognition under uncontrolled illumination conditions is still considered an unsolved problem. In order to correct for these illumination conditions, we propose a virtual illumination grid (VIG) approach to model the unknown illumination conditions. Furthermore, we use coupled subspace models of both the facial surface and albedo to estimate the face shape. In order to obtain a representation of the face under frontal illumination, we relight the estimated face shape. We show that the frontal illuminated facial images achieve better performance in face recognition. We have performed the challenging Experiment 4 of the FRGCv2 database, which compares uncontrolled probe images to controlled gallery images. Our illumination correction method results in considerably better recognition rates for a number of well-known face recognition methods. By fusing our global illumination correction method with a local illumination correction method, further improvements are achieved.     

Exploring the effect of illumination on automatic expression recognition using the ICT-3DRFE database

One of the main challenges in facial expression recognition is illumination invariance. Our long-term goal is to develop a system for automatic facial expression recognition that is robust to light variations. In this paper, we introduce a novel 3D Relightable Facial Expression (ICT-3DRFE) database that enables experimentation in the fields of both computer graphics and computer vision. The database contains 3D models for 23 subjects and 15 expressions, as well as photometric information that allow for photorealistic rendering. It is also facial action units annotated, using FACS standards. Using the ICT-3DRFE database we create an image set of different expressions/illuminations to study the effect of illumination on automatic expression recognition. We compared the output scores from automatic recognition with expert FACS annotations and found that they agree when the illumination is uniform. Our results show that the output distribution of the automatic recognition can change significantly with light variations and sometimes causes the discrimination of two different expressions to be diminished. We propose a ratio-based light transfer method, to factor out unwanted illuminations from given images and show that it reduces the effect of illumination on expression recognition.     

The quotient image: class-based re-rendering and recognition withvarying illuminations

The paper addresses the problem of “class-based” image-based recognition and rendering with varying illumination. The rendering problem is defined as follows: Given a single input image of an object and a sample of images with varying illumination conditions of other objects of the same general class, re-render the input image to simulate new illumination conditions. The class-based recognition problem is similarly defined: Given a single image of an object in a database of images of other objects, some of them multiply sampled under varying illumination, identify (match) any novel image of that object under varying illumination with the single image of that object in the database. We focus on Lambertian surface classes and, in particular, the class of human faces. The key result in our approach is based on a definition of an illumination invariant signature image which enables an analytic generation of the image space with varying illumination. We show that a small database of objects-in our experiments as few as two objects-is sufficient for generating the image space with varying illumination of any new object of the class from a single input image of that object. In many cases, the recognition results outperform by far conventional methods and the re-rendering is of remarkable quality considering the size of the database of example images and the mild preprocess required for making the algorithm work     

多姿态人脸照片的姿态估计

提出了一种基于面部图像的新的匹配系统。在这个系统中,输入的图像与各种人脸姿态的数据库图像进行比较,然后,匹配的图像给出了人脸姿态。图像数据库不仅包括各种人脸姿态,而且也包括不同的光照条件,如此,这个人脸姿态评价系统适用于不同的光照条件。对于收集各种不同面部图像,这里是通过计算机自动产生,而不是拍摄实际的照片。特征空间方法被用于寻找与输入面部图像匹配的图像。因为不同的光照图像被收集在面部图像数据库中,故提取的主特征向量主要依靠人脸姿态。由于通过选用主特征向量而减少了向量的维数,故这个匹配过程是很快的。这个姿态评价系统能够继续跟踪在不同的光照条件下不同人的人脸姿态。     

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。     

Illumination invariant extraction for face recognition using neighboring wavelet coefficients

The features of a face can change drastically as the illumination changes. In contrast to pose position and expression, illumination changes present a much greater challenge to face recognition. In this paper, we propose a novel wavelet based approach that considers the correlation of neighboring wavelet coefficients to extract an illumination invariant. This invariant represents the key facial structure needed for face recognition. Our method has better edge preserving ability in low frequency illumination fields and better useful information saving ability in high frequency fields using wavelet based NeighShrink denoise techniques. This method proposes different process approaches for training images and testing images since these images always have different illuminations. More importantly, by having different processes, a simple processing algorithm with low time complexity can be applied to the testing image. This leads to an easy application to real face recognition systems. Experimental results on Yale face database B and CMU PIE Face Database show that excellent recognition rates can be achieved by the proposed method.     

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。     

基于对称双线性模型的光照鲁棒性人脸表情识别

针对传统的光照预处理方法降低原始图像质量、丢失部分有效辨识信息的缺点,提出一种新颖的应用对称双线性模型来对人脸表情图像进行光照预处理的光照鲁棒性人脸表情识别方法.首先通过对称双线性模型将训练集图像分解为相互独立的光照因子和表情因子,并提取其光照因子.接下来提取含有未知光照的测试集表情图像的表情因子,并将其转换到训练集的若干个已知光照上,这样处理能够将任意光照的测试图像转换到相同的光照平台上,令所有测试图像的特征具有归一化特性.实验结果表明, 本文所提光照预处理方 法在识别性能上优于传统的光照预处理方法,应用在光照处理后的JAFFE表情库上识别率达到92.37%, 表明其适用于光照鲁棒性人脸表情识别.     

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.     

Building Illumination Coherent 3D Models of Large-Scale Outdoor Scenes

Systems for the creation of photorealistic models using range scans and digital photographs are becoming increasingly popular in a wide range of fields, from reverse engineering to cultural heritage preservation. These systems employ a range finder to acquire the geometry information and a digital camera to measure color detail. But bringing together a set of range scans and color images to produce an accurate and usable model is still an area of research with many unsolved problems. In this paper we address the problem of how to build illumination coherent integrated texture maps from images that were taken under different illumination conditions. To achieve this we present two different solutions. The first one is to align all the images to the same illumination, for which we have developed a technique that computes a relighting operator over the area of overlap of a pair of images that we then use to relight the entire image. Our proposed method can handle images with shadows and can effectively remove the shadows from the image, if required. The second technique uses the ratio of two images to factor out the diffuse reflectance of an image from its illumination. We do this without any light measuring device. By computing the actual reflectance we remove from the images any effects of the illumination, allowing us to create new renderings under novel illumination conditions.     

Generalization to Novel Views: Universal,Class-based,and Model-based Processing

A major problem in object recognition is that a novel image of a given object can be different from all previously seen images. Images can vary considerably due to changes in viewing conditions such as viewing position and illumination. In this paper we distinguish between three types of recognition schemes by the level at which generalization to novel images takes place: universal, class, and model-based. The first is applicable equally to all objects, the second to a class of objects, and the third uses known properties of individual objects. We derive theoretical limitations on each of the three generalization levels. For the universal level, previous results have shown that no invariance can be obtained. Here we show that this limitation holds even when the assumptions made on the objects and the recognition functions are relaxed. We also extend the results to changes of illumination direction. For the class level, previous studies presented specific examples of classes of objects for which functions invariant to viewpoint exist. Here, we distinguish between classes that admit such invariance and classes that do not. We demonstrate that there is a tradeoff between the set of objects that can be discriminated by a given recognition function and the set of images from which the recognition function can recognize these objects. Furthermore, we demonstrate that although functions that are invariant to illumination direction do not exist at the universal level, when the objects are restricted to belong to a given class, an invariant function to illumination direction can be defined. A general conclusion of this study is that class-based processing, that has not been used extensively in the past, is often advantageous for dealing with variations due to viewpoint and illuminant changes.     

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.     

Illumination compensation and normalization for robust face recognition using discrete cosine transform in logarithm domain.

This paper presents a novel illumination normalization approach for face recognition under varying lighting conditions. In the proposed approach, a discrete cosine transform (DCT) is employed to compensate for illumination variations in the logarithm domain. Since illumination variations mainly lie in the low-frequency band, an appropriate number of DCT coefficients are truncated to minimize variations under different lighting conditions. Experimental results on the Yale B database and CMU PIE database show that the proposed approach improves the performance significantly for the face images with large illumination variations. Moreover, the advantage of our approach is that it does not require any modeling steps and can be easily implemented in a real-time face recognition system.     

不同光照条件下特征脸方法的改进研究

提出了一种针对人脸图像的预处理方法,针对光照条件影响对特征主分量进行了改进研究。首先介绍了特征脸识别方法的起源与实现,然后介绍了添加对自身图像灰度值零均值的预处理方法。基于FERET人脸图像组建特征库和测试库,对特征脸方法中的前三个主分量进行具体分析,得出了其对光照敏感的规律,及在光照影响较为严重的情况下主分量的最佳选取方法。     

Face recognition: the problem of compensating for changes inillumination direction

A face recognition system must recognize a face from a novel image despite the variations between images of the same face. A common approach to overcoming image variations because of changes in the illumination conditions is to use image representations that are relatively insensitive to these variations. Examples of such representations are edge maps, image intensity derivatives, and images convolved with 2D Gabor-like filters. Here we present an empirical study that evaluates the sensitivity of these representations to changes in illumination, as well as viewpoint and facial expression. Our findings indicated that none of the representations considered is sufficient by itself to overcome image variations because of a change in the direction of illumination. Similar results were obtained for changes due to viewpoint and expression. Image representations that emphasized the horizontal features were found to be less sensitive to changes in the direction of illumination. However, systems based only on such representations failed to recognize up to 20 percent of the faces in our database. Humans performed considerably better under the same conditions. We discuss possible reasons for this superiority and alternative methods for overcoming illumination effects in recognition     

VISA: a multimodal database of face and iris traits

In this paper, a new realistic and challenging Face-Iris multimodal biometric database called VISA database is described. One significant problem associated with the development and evaluation of multimodal biometric systems using face and iris biometric traits is the lack of publicly available multimodal databases that are acquired in an unconstrained environment. Currently, there exist no multimodal databases containing a sufficient number of common subjects involved in both face and iris data acquisition process under different conditions. The VISA database fulfills these requirements and it will be a useful tool for the design and development of new algorithms for developing multimodal biometric systems. The VISA iris images are acquired using the IriShield camera. Face images are captured using mobile device. The corpus of a new VISA database consists of face images that vary in expression, pose and illumination, and presence of occlusion whereas iris images vary in illumination, eye movement, and occlusion. A total of more than 5000 images of 100 subjects are collated and used to form the new database. The key features of the VISA dataset are the wide and diverse population of subjects (age and gender). The VISA database is able to support face and/or iris unimodal or multimodal biometric recognition. Hence, the VISA database is a useful addition for the purpose of research and development of biometric systems based on face and iris biometrics. This paper also describes the baseline results of state-of-the-art methods on the VISA dataset and other popular similar datasets. The VISA database will be made available to the public through https://vtu.ac.in/en/visa-multimodal-face-and-iris-biometrics-database/

     

Inter-image outliers and their application to image classification

Image variability that is impossible or difficult to restore by intra-image processing, such as the variability caused by occlusions, significantly reduces the performance of image-recognition methods. To address this issue, we propose that the pixels associated with large distances obtained by inter-image pixel-by-pixels comparisons should be considered as inter-image outliers and should be removed from the similarity calculation used for the image classification. When this method is combined with the template-matching method for image recognition, it leads to state-of-the-art recognition performance: 91% with AR database that includes occluded face images, 90% with PUT database that includes pose variations of face images and 100% with EYale B database that includes images with large illumination variation.