Generalizing capacity of face database for face recognition

A face image can be represented by a point in a feature space such as spanned by a number of eigenfaces. In methods based on nearest neighbor classification, the representational capacity of a face database depends on how prototypical face images are chosen to account for possible image variations and also how many prototypical images or their feature points are available. We propose a novel method for generalizing the representational capacity of available face database. Any two feature points of the same class (individual) are generalized by the feature line passing through the points. The feature line covers more of the face space than the feature points and thus expands the capacity of the available database. In the feature line representation, the classification is based on the distance between the feature point of the query image and each of the feature lines of the prototypical images. Experiments are presented using a data set from five databases: the MIT, Cambridge, Bern, Yale and our own. There are 620 images of 124 individuals subject to varying viewpoint, illumination, and expression. The results show that the error rate of the proposed method is about 55%-60% of that of the standard eigenface method of M.A. Turk and A.P. Pentland (1991). They also demonstrate that the recognition result can be used for inferring how the position of the input face relative to the two retrieved faces.