2D face fitting-assisted 3D face reconstruction for pose-robust face recognition

Recent face recognition algorithm can achieve high accuracy when the tested face samples are frontal. However, when the face pose changes largely, the performance of existing methods drop drastically. Efforts on pose-robust face recognition are highly desirable, especially when each face class has only one frontal training sample. In this study, we propose a 2D face fitting-assisted 3D face reconstruction algorithm that aims at recognizing faces of different poses when each face class has only one frontal training sample. For each frontal training sample, a 3D face is reconstructed by optimizing the parameters of 3D morphable model (3DMM). By rotating the reconstructed 3D face to different views, pose virtual face images are generated to enlarge the training set of face recognition. Different from the conventional 3D face reconstruction methods, the proposed algorithm utilizes automatic 2D face fitting to assist 3D face reconstruction. We automatically locate 88 sparse points of the frontal face by 2D face-fitting algorithm. Such 2D face-fitting algorithm is so-called Random Forest Embedded Active Shape Model, which embeds random forest learning into the framework of Active Shape Model. Results of 2D face fitting are added to the 3D face reconstruction objective function as shape constraints. The optimization objective energy function takes not only image intensity, but also 2D fitting results into account. Shape and texture parameters of 3DMM are thus estimated by fitting the 3DMM to the 2D frontal face sample, which is a non-linear optimization problem. We experiment the proposed method on the publicly available CMUPIE database, which includes faces viewed from 11 different poses, and the results show that the proposed method is effective and the face recognition results toward pose variants are promising.     

基于压缩感知理论的3维人脸快速重建

形变模型是当前人脸重建研究中的一种主要方法。针对形变模型方法中模型构建的缺陷,提出一种基于压缩感知理论的快速三维人脸重建方法。首先,利用压缩感知理论估计三维原型人脸与目标人脸的形状相似性,根据相似性对原型样本进行筛选并构建相应的形变模型,提高建模精度和效率;然后,利用特征点信息进行稀疏模型匹配,并结合径向基函数插值重建生成特定的三维人脸,提高重建表面的平滑性。在BJUT三维数据库和CAS_PEAL二维数据库上的实验结果表明,与经典方法相比,本文方法能够有效地提高重建精度和速度,重建人脸具有较强真实感。     

Real-time 3D face tracking based on active appearance model constrained by depth data

Active Appearance Model (AAM) is an algorithm for fitting a generative model of object shape and appearance to an input image. AAM allows accurate, real-time tracking of human faces in 2D and can be extended to track faces in 3D by constraining its fitting with a linear 3D morphable model. Unfortunately, this AAM-based 3D tracking does not provide adequate accuracy and robustness, as we show in this paper. We introduce a new constraint into AAM fitting that uses depth data from a commodity RGBD camera (Kinect). This addition significantly reduces 3D tracking errors. We also describe how to initialize the 3D morphable face model used in our tracking algorithm by computing its face shape parameters of the user from a batch of tracked frames. The described face tracking algorithm is used in Microsoft's Kinect system.     

Reflectance from images: a model-based approach for human faces

In this paper, we present an image-based framework that acquires the reflectance properties of a human face. A range scan of the face is not required. Based on a morphable face model, the system estimates the 3D shape and establishes point-to-point correspondence across images taken from different viewpoints and across different individuals' faces. This provides a common parameterization of all reconstructed surfaces that can be used to compare and transfer BRDF data between different faces. Shape estimation from images compensates deformations of the face during the measurement process, such as facial expressions. In the common parameterization, regions of homogeneous materials on the face surface can be defined a priori. We apply analytical BRDF models to express the reflectance properties of each region and we estimate their parameters in a least-squares fit from the image data. For each of the surface points, the diffuse component of the BRDF is locally refined, which provides high detail. We present results for multiple analytical BRDF models, rendered at novel orientations and lighting conditions.     

基于形变模型的多角度三维人脸实时重建

摘 要：采用人脸特征点调整三维形变模型的方法应用于面部三维重建,但模型形变的计 算往往会产生误差,且耗时较长。因此运用人脸二维特征点对通用三维形变模型的拟合方法进 行改进,提出了一种视频流的多角度实时三维人脸重建方法。首先利用带有三层卷积网络的 CLNF 算法识别二维特征点,并跟踪特征点位置;然后由五官特征点位置估计头部姿态,更新 模型的表情系数,其结果再作用于 PCA 形状系数,促使当前三维模型发生形变;最后采用 ISOMAP 算法提取网格纹理信息,进行纹理融合形成特定人脸模型。实验结果表明,该方法在 人脸重建过程中具有更好的实时性能,且精确度有所提高。     

Prediction of Individual Non-Linear Aging Trajectories of Faces

Represented in a Morphable Model, 3D faces follow curved trajectories in face space as they age. We present a novel algorithm that computes the individual aging trajectories for given faces, based on a non-linear function that assigns an age to each face vector. This function is learned from a database of 3D scans of teenagers and adults using support vector regression. To apply the aging prediction to images of faces, we reconstruct a 3D model from the input image, apply the aging transformation on both shape and texture, and then render the face back into the same image or into images of other individuals at the appropriate ages, for example images of older children. Among other applications, our system can help to find missing children.     

形状约束的三维人脸组件形变模型

传统的三维人脸形变模型是通过对大量的三维人脸数据进行学习,构建描述人脸三维形状和纹理的参数模型,通过模型优化完成对二维人脸图像的三维重构。但是,实际中大量的训练样本是很难获得的,这导致形变模型描述能力的不完善,制约了它的应用。如将整个人脸看成由若干个组件组合而成,则在样本数不变的情况下降低了描述空间的维数,提高了模型的描述能力。但是在重构人脸图像时必须解决组件间三维空间的重叠合并,并且随着组件数目的增加,模型参数也随之增加,所以对优化算法也提出了更高的要求。为了解决形变模型的这些困难,提出了一种全局模型和组件模型的折中算法,即在形状上保持全局约束而纹理上进行组件匹配,从而在算法性能和算法复杂度之间获得了一个有效的平衡。     

基于弱监督学习的三维人脸形状与纹理重建

三维人脸相较于二维人脸包含了更多特征信息, 可应用于如人脸识别、影视娱乐、医疗美容等更多实际应用场景, 因此三维人脸重建技术一直是计算机视觉领域的研究热点. 由于真实三维人脸数据较难获取, 很多基于深度学习的重建算法首先利用传统重建方法为大量二维人脸图像构建三维标签, 作为训练数据, 这些数据可能并不精准, 从而导致算法的重建精度受到影响. 为此, 本文提出一种基于multi-level损失函数的弱监督学习模型, 结合传统三维人脸形变模型3DMM与深度学习方法, 直接从大量无三维标签的二维人脸图像中学习三维人脸特征信息, 从而实现基于单张二维人脸图像的三维人脸重建算法. 此外, 为解决二维人脸图像中常存在遮挡或大姿态情况而影响人脸纹理重建的问题, 本文使用基于CelebAMask-HQ数据集的人脸解析分割算法对图像进行预处理去除遮挡区域. 实验结果表明, 基于本文方法的三维人脸重建质量与重建精度均实现了一定的提升.     

基于特征点加细的多分辨率人脸形变模型及人脸建模

提出基于特征点加细的原型三维人脸对应方法建立多分辨人脸形变模型,并根据该形变模型的特点使用多分辨模型匹配方法由单张正面人脸图像进行三维人脸建模。该方法以人脸模型上的眼、眉、口、鼻等主要几何特征为基准点标注基础网格,然后通过加细特征点网格完成原型人脸之间的对应,进而建立多分辨率的形变模型;根据形变模型的构造特点,把待匹配图像按照与模型相同方式进行加细,然后进行多分辨的人脸模型匹配。实验结果表明,新的对应算法可以有效地实现原型三维人脸之间的对应,能够克服传统的光流对应算法对应效果差,算法精度低的缺陷,提高形变模型的精度。新的匹配算法不仅能够加速模型的匹配速度,而且可提高模型匹配的效率和精度,缩短模型匹配的时间。     

A lighting robust fitting approach of 3D morphable model for face reconstruction

Three-dimensional morphable model (3DMM) is a powerful tool for recovering 3D shape and texture from a single facial image. The success of 3DMM relies on two things: an effective optimization strategy and a realistic approach to synthesizing face images. However, most previous methods have focused on developing an optimization strategy under Phong’s synthesis approach. In this paper, we adopt a more realistic synthesis technique that fully considers illumination and reflectance in the 3DMM fitting process. Using the sphere harmonic illumination model (SHIM), our new synthesis approach can account for more lighting factors than Phong’s model. Spatially varying specular reflectance is also introduced into the synthesis process. Under SHIM, the cost function is nearly linear for all parameters, which simplifies the optimization. We apply our new optimization algorithm to determine the shape and texture parameters simultaneously. The accuracy of the recovered shape and texture can be improved significantly by considering the spatially varying specular reflectance. Hence, our algorithm produces an enhanced shape and texture compared with previous SHIM-based methods that recover shape from feature points. Although we use just a single input image in a profile pose, our approach gives plausible results. Experiments on a well-known image database show that, compared to state-of-the-art methods based on Phong’s model, the proposed approach enhances the robustness of the 3DMM fitting results under extreme lighting and profile pose.     

基于特征分块的三维人脸重建和识别

针对传统三维人脸重建算法效率低且难以满足实际应用的缺陷,提出一种基于特征分块的三维人脸重建算法,并将此算法应用到三维人脸识别中,实现了基于特征分块的加权三维人脸识别。首先,利用基于平面模板的非均匀重采样法对原始数据进行归一化;其次,采用主动形状模型(ASM)算法对三维人脸和二维人脸图像进行特征定位和特征分块;然后,利用基于分块主元分析(PCA)的稀疏形变模型算法实现每个人脸分块的三维重建;最后,实现了此算法在三维人脸识别中的应用。实验表明,此重建算法具有较高的精度和重建效率,还可以达到全局最优,并且可以提高三维人脸的识别率。     

Face Relighting from a Single Image under Arbitrary Unknown Lighting Conditions

In this paper, we present a new method to modify the appearance of a face image by manipulating the illumination condition, when the face geometry and albedo information is unknown. This problem is particularly difficult when there is only a single image of the subject available. Recent research demonstrates that the set of images of a convex Lambertian object obtained under a wide variety of lighting conditions can be approximated accurately by a low-dimensional linear subspace using a spherical harmonic representation. Moreover, morphable models are statistical ensembles of facial properties such as shape and texture. In this paper, we integrate spherical harmonics into the morphable model framework by proposing a 3D spherical harmonic basis morphable model (SHBMM). The proposed method can represent a face under arbitrary unknown lighting and pose simply by three low-dimensional vectors, i.e., shape parameters, spherical harmonic basis parameters, and illumination coefficients, which are called the SHBMM parameters. However, when the image was taken under an extreme lighting condition, the approximation error can be large, thus making it difficult to recover albedo information. In order to address this problem, we propose a subregion-based framework that uses a Markov random field to model the statistical distribution and spatial coherence of face texture, which makes our approach not only robust to extreme lighting conditions, but also insensitive to partial occlusions. The performance of our framework is demonstrated through various experimental results, including the improved rates for face recognition under extreme lighting conditions.     

Occlusion-Aware 3D Morphable Models and an Illumination Prior for Face Image Analysis

Faces in natural images are often occluded by a variety of objects. We propose a fully automated, probabilistic and occlusion-aware 3D morphable face model adaptation framework following an analysis-by-synthesis setup. The key idea is to segment the image into regions explained by separate models. Our framework includes a 3D morphable face model, a prototype-based beard model and a simple model for occlusions and background regions. The segmentation and all the model parameters have to be inferred from the single target image. Face model adaptation and segmentation are solved jointly using an expectation–maximization-like procedure. During the E-step, we update the segmentation and in the M-step the face model parameters are updated. For face model adaptation we apply a stochastic sampling strategy based on the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm. For segmentation, we apply loopy belief propagation for inference in a Markov random field. Illumination estimation is critical for occlusion handling. Our combined segmentation and model adaptation needs a proper initialization of the illumination parameters. We propose a RANSAC-based robust illumination estimation technique. By applying this method to a large face image database we obtain a first empirical distribution of real-world illumination conditions. The obtained empirical distribution is made publicly available and can be used as prior in probabilistic frameworks, for regularization or to synthesize data for deep learning methods.     

Reconstruction of partially damaged face images based on a morphable face model

This paper proposes a method for reconstructing partially damaged faces based on a morphable face model. Faces are modeled by linear combinations of prototypes of shape and texture. With the shape and texture information from an undamaged region only, we can estimate optimal coefficients for linear combinations of prototypes of shape and texture by simple projection for least-square minimization (LSM). Our experimental results show that reconstructed faces are very natural and plausible like real photos.     

基于单幅正面照片的三维人脸重建方法

三维人脸重建算法需要多张照片实现重建且重建效率低下。针对上述问题,提出一种利用单幅正面照片重建三维人脸的方法。采用薄板样条函数对数据库中的三维人脸确立点对点的对应关系,建立平均三维人脸模型,利用LMA算法优化形状系数以恢复其三维形状,人脸颜色纹理信息可通过垂直投影得到。实验结果表明,利用该方法重建得到的三维人脸逼真且时间效率高。     

Reconstructing 3D Shape,Albedo and Illumination from a Single Face Image

The morphable model has been employed to efficiently describe 3D face shape and the associated albedo with a reduced set of basis vectors. The spherical harmonics (SH) model provides a compact basis to well approximate the image appearance of a Lambertian object under different illumination conditions. Recently, the SH and morphable models have been integrated for 3D face shape reconstruction. However, the reconstructed 3D shape is either inconsistent with the SH bases or obtained just from landmarks only. In this work, we propose a geometrically consistent algorithm to reconstruct the 3D face shape and the associated albedo from a single face image iteratively by combining the morphable model and the SH model. The reconstructed 3D face geometry can uniquely determine the SH bases, therefore the optimal 3D face model can be obtained by minimizing the error between the input face image and a linear combination of the associated SH bases. In this way, we are able to preserve the consistency between the 3D geometry and the SH model, thus refining the 3D shape reconstruction recursively. Furthermore, we present a novel approach to recover the illumination condition from the estimated weighting vector for the SH bases in a constrained optimization formulation independent of the 3D geometry. Experimental results show the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed face reconstruction and illumination estimation algorithm under different face poses and multiple‐light‐source illumination conditions.     

Video-to-video face authentication system robust to pose variations

High-quality still-to-still (image-to-image) face authentication has shown success under controlled conditions in many safety applications. However, video-to-video face authentication is still challenging due to appearance variations caused by pose changes. In this paper, we propose a video-to-video face authentication system that is robust to pose variations by making use of synthesized frontal face appearance that contains both texture and shape information. To obtain the appearance, we first reconstruct 3D face shape from face feature points detected from the video using active shape model (ASM). Conventional ASM algorithms cannot handle large pose variations and fast head movement exhibited in video sequences. To address these problems, we present a novel prediction-assisted approach that is capable of providing an accurate shape initiation as well as automatically switching on multi-view models for ASM. Then we can generate frontal shape mesh from the reconstructed 3D face shape. Based on the mesh, we synthesize frontal face appearance with the ASM-detected faces in video. For authentication, in order to match the synthesized appearances of enrollment and probe, we propose a 2-directional 2-dimensional client specific fisher’s linear discriminant algorithm. The proposed algorithm is a variant of fisher’s linear discriminant (FLD) and directly computes eigenvectors of image scatter matrices in row and column direction without matrix-to-vector conversion. In experiments, our authentication system is compared with the other state-of-art approaches on public face database and our face database. The results show that our system demonstrates a higher authentication accuracy and pose-robust performance.     

Pose-invariant face recognition using a 3D deformable model

The paper proposes a novel, pose-invariant face recognition system based on a deformable, generic 3D face model, that is a composite of: (1) an edge model, (2) a color region model and (3) a wireframe model for jointly describing the shape and important features of the face. The first two submodels are used for image analysis and the third mainly for face synthesis. In order to match the model to face images in arbitrary poses, the 3D model can be projected onto different 2D viewplanes based on rotation, translation and scale parameters, thereby generating multiple face-image templates (in different sizes and orientations). Face shape variations among people are taken into account by the deformation parameters of the model. Given an unknown face, its pose is estimated by model matching and the system synthesizes face images of known subjects in the same pose. The face is then classified as the subject whose synthesized image is most similar. The synthesized images are generated using a 3D face representation scheme which encodes the 3D shape and texture characteristics of the faces. This face representation is automatically derived from training face images of the subject. Experimental results show that the method is capable of determining pose and recognizing faces accurately over a wide range of poses and with naturally varying lighting conditions. Recognition rates of 92.3% have been achieved by the method with 10 training face images per person.     

Face recognition from a single training image under arbitrary unknown lighting using spherical harmonics

In this paper, we propose two novel methods for face recognition under arbitrary unknown lighting by using spherical harmonics illumination representation, which require only one training image per subject and no 3D shape information. Our methods are based on the result which demonstrated that the set of images of a convex Lambertian object obtained under a wide variety of lighting conditions can be approximated accurately by a low-dimensional linear subspace. We provide two methods to estimate the spherical harmonic basis images spanning this space from just one image. Our first method builds the statistical model based on a collection of 2D basis images. We demonstrate that, by using the learned statistics, we can estimate the spherical harmonic basis images from just one image taken under arbitrary illumination conditions if there is no pose variation. Compared to the first method, the second method builds the statistical models directly in 3D spaces by combining the spherical harmonic illumination representation and a 3D morphable model of human faces to recover basis images from images across both poses and illuminations. After estimating the basis images, we use the same recognition scheme for both methods: we recognize the face for which there exists a weighted combination of basis images that is the closest to the test face image. We provide a series of experiments that achieve high recognition rates, under a wide range of illumination conditions, including multiple sources of illumination. Our methods achieve comparable levels of accuracy with methods that have much more onerous training data requirements. Comparison of the two methods is also provided.