Wavelet-based Illumination Compensation for Face Recognition using Eigenface Method

Eigenface is an effective human face recognition technique. However its performance is affected to some extent by lighting conditions in capturing face images. In this paper, a new algorithm for the illumination compensation of face images based on Wavelet transform is proposed. By discarding the low frequency components of a face image and reconstructing the image using the high frequency components only, the influence of lightings on face image recognition can be greatly reduced. Experimental results on Yale face database and our own face database show that the recognition rate of the eigenface method on the lighting compensated images is increased significantly