Energy normalization for pose-invariant face recognition based on MRF model image matching

A pose-invariant face recognition system based on an image matching method formulated on MRFs is presented. The method uses the energy of the established match between a pair of images as a measure of goodness-of-match. The method can tolerate moderate global spatial transformations between the gallery and the test images and alleviate the need for geometric preprocessing of facial images by encapsulating a registration step as part of the system. It requires no training on non-frontal face images. A number of innovations, such as a dynamic block size and block shape adaptation, as well as label pruning and error pre-whitening measures have been introduced to increase the effectiveness of the approach. The experimental evaluation of the method is performed on two publicly available databases. First, the method is tested on the rotation shots of the XM2VTS data set in a verification scenario. Next, the evaluation is conducted in an identification scenario on the CMU-PIE database. The method compares favorably with the existing 2D or 3D generative model-based methods on both databases in both identification and verification scenarios.