Context-Patch Face Hallucination Based on Thresholding Locality-Constrained Representation and Reproducing Learning

Face hallucination is a technique that reconstruct high-resolution (HR) faces from low-resolution (LR) faces, by using the prior knowledge learned from HR/LR face pairs. Most state-of-the-arts leverage position-patch prior knowledge of human face to estimate the optimal representation coefficients for each image patch. However, they focus only the position information and usually ignore the context information of image patch. In addition, when they are confronted with misalignment or the Small Sample Size (SSS) problem, the hallucination performance is very poor. To this end, this study incorporates the contextual information of image patch and proposes a powerful and efficient context-patch based face hallucination approach, namely Thresholding Locality-constrained Representation and Reproducing learning (TLcR-RL). Under the context-patch based framework, we advance a thresholding based representation method to enhance the reconstruction accuracy and reduce the computational complexity. To further improve the performance of the proposed algorithm, we propose a promotion strategy called reproducing learning. By adding the estimated HR face to the training set, which can simulates the case that the HR version of the input LR face is present in the training set, thus iteratively enhancing the final hallucination result. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed TLcR-RL method achieves a substantial increase in the hallucinated results, both subjectively and objectively. Additionally, the proposed framework is more robust to face misalignment and the SSS problem, and its hallucinated HR face is still very good when the LR test face is from the real-world. The MATLAB source code is available at https://github.com/junjun-jiang/TLcR-RL

Robust Face Representation and Recognition Under Low Resolution and Difficult Lighting Conditions

This dissertation focuses on different aspects of face image analysis for accurate face recognition under low resolution and poor lighting conditions. A novel resolution enhancement technique is proposed for enhancing a low resolution face image into a high resolution image for better visualization and improved feature extraction, especially in a video surveillance environment. This method performs kernel regression and component feature learning in local neighborhood of the face images. It uses directional Fourier phase feature component to adaptively lean the regression kernel based on local covariance to estimate the high resolution image. For each patch in the neighborhood, four directional variances are estimated to adapt the interpolated pixels. A Modified Local Binary Pattern (MLBP) methodology for feature extraction is proposed to obtain robust face recognition under varying lighting conditions. Original LBP operator compares pixels in a local neighborhood with the center pixel and converts the resultant binary string to 8-bit integer value. So, it is less effective under difficult lighting conditions where variation between pixels is negligible. The proposed MLBP uses a two stage encoding procedure which is more robust in detecting this variation in a local patch. A novel dimensionality reduction technique called Marginality Preserving Embedding (MPE) is also proposed for enhancing the face recognition accuracy. Unlike Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), which project data in a global sense, MPE seeks for a local structure in the manifold. This is similar to other subspace learning techniques but the difference with other manifold learning is that MPE preserves marginality in local reconstruction. Hence it provides better representation in low dimensional space and achieves lower error rates in face recognition. Two new concepts for robust face recognition are also presented in this dissertation. In the first approach, a neural network is used for training the system where input vectors are created by measuring distance from each input to its class mean. In the second approach, half-face symmetry is used, realizing the fact that the face images may contain various expressions such as open/close eye, open/close mouth etc., and classify the top half and bottom half separately and finally fuse the two results. By performing experiments on several standard face datasets, improved results were observed in all the new proposed methodologies. Research is progressing in developing a unified approach for the extraction of features suitable for accurate face recognition in a long range video sequence in complex environments

Image Super-Resolution Based on Sparse Coding with Multi-Class Dictionaries

Sparse coding-based single image super-resolution has attracted much interest. In this paper, a super-resolution reconstruction algorithm based on sparse coding with multi-class dictionaries is put forward. We propose a novel method for image patch classification, using the phase congruency information. A sub-dictionary is learned from patches in each category. For a given image patch, the sub-dictionary that belongs to the same category is selected adaptively. Since the given patch has similar pattern with the selected sub-dictionary, it can be better represented. Finally, iterative back-projection is used to enforce global reconstruction constraint. Experiments demonstrate that our approach can produce comparable or even better super-resolution reconstruction results with some existing algorithms, in both subjective visual quality and numerical measures

Manifold Constrained Low-Rank Decomposition

Low-rank decomposition (LRD) is a state-of-the-art method for visual data reconstruction and modelling. However, it is a very challenging problem when the image data contains significant occlusion, noise, illumination variation, and misalignment from rotation or viewpoint changes. We leverage the specific structure of data in order to improve the performance of LRD when the data are not ideal. To this end, we propose a new framework that embeds manifold priors into LRD. To implement the framework, we design an alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) method which efficiently integrates the manifold constraints during the optimization process. The proposed approach is successfully used to calculate low-rank models from face images, hand-written digits and planar surface images. The results show a consistent increase of performance when compared to the state-of-the-art over a wide range of realistic image misalignments and corruptions

Development Of A High Performance Mosaicing And Super-Resolution Algorithm

In this dissertation, a high-performance mosaicing and super-resolution algorithm is described. The scale invariant feature transform (SIFT)-based mosaicing algorithm builds an initial mosaic which is iteratively updated by the robust super resolution algorithm to achieve the final high-resolution mosaic. Two different types of datasets are used for testing: high altitude balloon data and unmanned aerial vehicle data. To evaluate our algorithm, five performance metrics are employed: mean square error, peak signal to noise ratio, singular value decomposition, slope of reciprocal singular value curve, and cumulative probability of blur detection. Extensive testing shows that the proposed algorithm is effective in improving the captured aerial data and the performance metrics are accurate in quantifying the evaluation of the algorithm