Occlusion detection and image restoration in 3D face image

Face recognition system has emerged as an important field in case of surveillance systems. Since three-dimensional imaging systems have reached a notable growth, we consider the 3D image for face recognition. Occlusion (extraneous objects that hinder face recognition, e.g., scarf, glass, beard etc.,) is one of the greatest challenges in face recognition systems. Other issues are illumination, pose, scale etc., an innovative three dimensional occlusion detection and restoration strategy for the recognition of three dimensional faces partially occluded by unforeseen objects is presented. Normalization provides orientation of the image to frontal view since we require frontal position for face recognition. An efficient method is used for detection of occlusions, which specifies the missing information in the occluded face. A restoration method then eliminates occlusion and renders a restored facial image. It exploits the information provided by the non-occluded part of the face to recover the original face. Restored faces are then applied to a suitable face recognition system. The proposed system will provide better accuracy to eliminate the occlusion and restored facial information method is independent of the face recognition method.