Constructing 3D facial hierarchical structure based on surface measurements

In this paper, we propose a novel framework for 3D facial similarity measures and facial data organization. The 3D facial similarity measures of our method are based on iso-geodesic stripes and conformal parameterization. Using the conformal parameterization, the 3D facial surface can be mapped into a 2D domain and the iso-geodesic stripes of the face can be measured. The measure results can be regarded as the similarity of faces, which is robust to head poses and facial expressions. Based on the measure result, a hierarchical structure of faces can be constructed, which is used to organize different faces. The structure can be utilized to accelerate the face searching speed in a large database. In experiment, we construct the hierarchical structures from two public facial databases: Gavab and Texas3D. The searching speed based on the structure can be increased by 4-6 times without accuracy loss of recognition.