Expression-insensitive 3D face recognition using sparse representation

We present a face recognition method based on sparse representation for recognizing 3D face meshes under expressions using low-level geometric features. First, to enable the application of the sparse representation framework, we develop a uniform remeshing scheme to establish a consistent sampling pattern across 3D faces. To handle facial expressions, we design a feature pooling and ranking scheme to collect various types of low-level geometric features and rank them according to their sensitivities to facial expressions. By simply applying the sparse representation framework to the collected low-level features, our proposed method already achieves satisfactory recognition rates, which demonstrates the efficacy of the framework for 3D face recognition. To further improve results in the presence of severe facial expressions, we show that by choosing higher-ranked, i.e., expression-insensitive, features, the recognition rates approach those for neutral faces, without requiring an extensive set of reference faces for each individual to cover possible variations caused by expressions as proposed in previous work. We apply our face recognition method to the GavabDB and FRGC 2.0 databases and demonstrate encouraging results.