Face Recognition Using Curvelet and Waveatom Transform

The field of digital image processing is continually evolving. Nowadays, there is a significant increase in the level of interest in image morphology, neural networks, full-color image processing, image data compression and image recognition. This work deals with image recognition with the application of face recognition. Some people think that face recognition is an easy task for computer system as for humans, but in reality most of the face recognition systems can’t achieve a complete reliable performance because there are many factors affect on the process of recognition like: large variations in facial approach, head size and orientation, and change in environmental conditions, all these factors makes face recognition one of the fundamental problems in pattern analysis, other factors that impact the performance are the accuracy of face location stage and the number of actual face recognition techniques used in each system. So face recognition from still and video images is emerging as an active research area with numerous commercial and law enforcement application. This research identifies two techniques for face features extraction based on two different multiresolution analysis tools; the first called Curvelet transform while the second is waveatom transform. The resultant features are inputted to train via two famous classifiers; one of them is the artificial neural network (ANN) and the other is hidden Markov model (HMM). Experiments are carried out on two well-known datasets; AT&T dataset consists of 400 images corresponding to 40 people, and Essex Grimace dataset consists of 360 images corresponding to 18 people. Experimental results show the strength of both curvelets and waveatom features. On one hand, waveatom features obtained the highest accuracy rate of 99% and 100% with HMM classifier, and 98% and 100% with ANN classifier, for AT&T and Essex Grimace datasets, respectively. On the other hand, two levels Curvelet features achieved accuracy rate of 98% and 100% with HMM classifier, and 97% and 100% with ANN classifier, for AT&T and Essex Grimace datasets, respectively. A comparative study for waveatom with wavelet-based, curvelet-based, and traditional Principal Component Analysis (PCA) techniques is also presented. The proposed techniques supersede all of them. And shows the robustness of feature extraction methods used against included and occluded effects. Also, indicates the potential of HMM over ANN, as they are classifiers

Local Discriminant Wavelet Packet Coordinates for Face Recognition

Face recognition is a challenging problem due to variations in pose, illumination, and expression. Techniques that can provide effective feature representation with enhanced discriminability are crucial. Wavelets have played an important role in image processing for its ability to capture localized spatial-frequency information of images. In this paper, we propose a novel local discriminant coordinates method based on wavelet packet for face recognition to compensate for these variations. Traditional wavelet-based methods for face recognition select or operate on the most discriminant subband, and neglect the scattered characteristic of discriminant features. The proposed method selects the most discriminant coordinates uniformly from all spatial frequency subbands to overcome the deficiency of traditional wavelet-based methods. To measure the discriminability of coordinates, a new dilation invariant entropy and a maximum a posterior logistic model are put forward. Moreover, a new triangle square ratio criterion is used to improve classification using the Euclidean distance and the cosine criterion. Experimental results show that the proposed method is robust for face recognition under variations in illumination, pose and expression

Biometric face recognition using multilinear projection and artificial intelligence

PhD ThesisNumerous problems of automatic facial recognition in the linear and multilinear subspace learning have been addressed; nevertheless, many difficulties remain. This work focuses on two key problems for automatic facial recognition and feature extraction: object representation and high dimensionality. To address these problems, a bidirectional two-dimensional neighborhood preserving projection (B2DNPP) approach for human facial recognition has been developed. Compared with 2DNPP, the proposed method operates on 2-D facial images and performs reductions on the directions of both rows and columns of images. Furthermore, it has the ability to reveal variations between these directions. To further improve the performance of the B2DNPP method, a new B2DNPP based on the curvelet decomposition of human facial images is introduced. The curvelet multi- resolution tool enhances the edges representation and other singularities along curves, and thus improves directional features. In this method, an extreme learning machine (ELM) classifier is used which significantly improves classification rate. The proposed C-B2DNPP method decreases error rate from 5.9% to 3.5%, from 3.7% to 2.0% and from 19.7% to 14.2% using ORL, AR, and FERET databases compared with 2DNPP. Therefore, it achieves decreases in error rate more than 40%, 45%, and 27% respectively with the ORL, AR, and FERET databases. Facial images have particular natural structures in the form of two-, three-, or even higher-order tensors. Therefore, a novel method of supervised and unsupervised multilinear neighborhood preserving projection (MNPP) is proposed for face recognition. This allows the natural representation of multidimensional images 2-D, 3-D or higher-order tensors and extracts useful information directly from tensotial data rather than from matrices or vectors. As opposed to a B2DNPP which derives only two subspaces, in the MNPP method multiple interrelated subspaces are obtained over different tensor directions, so that the subspaces are learned iteratively by unfolding the tensor along the different directions. The performance of the MNPP has performed in terms of the two modes of facial recognition biometrics systems of identification and verification. The proposed supervised MNPP method achieved decrease over 50.8%, 75.6%, and 44.6% in error rate using ORL, AR, and FERET databases respectively, compared with 2DNPP. Therefore, the results demonstrate that the MNPP approach obtains the best overall performance in various learning scenarios