Extended SRC: undersampled face recognition via intraclass variant dictionary

Sparse Representation-Based Classification (SRC) is a face recognition breakthrough in recent years which has successfully addressed the recognition problem with sufficient training images of each gallery subject. In this paper, we extend SRC to applications where there are very few, or even a single, training images per subject. Assuming that the intraclass variations of one subject can be approximated by a sparse linear combination of those of other subjects, Extended Sparse Representation-Based Classifier (ESRC) applies an auxiliary intraclass variant dictionary to represent the possible variation between the training and testing images. The dictionary atoms typically represent intraclass sample differences computed from either the gallery faces themselves or the generic faces that are outside the gallery. Experimental results on the AR and FERET databases show that ESRC has better generalization ability than SRC for undersampled face recognition under variable expressions, illuminations, disguises, and ages. The superior results of ESRC suggest that if the dictionary is properly constructed, SRC algorithms can generalize well to the large-scale face recognition problem, even with a single training image per class.