Using cartesian models of faces with a data-driven and integrable fitting framework

Abstract

We present an experimental analysis of four different ways of constructing three-dimensional statistical models of faces using Cartesian coordinates, namely: height, surface gradient, azimuthal angle and one based on Fourier domain basis functions. We test the ability of each of the models for dealing with information provided by shape-from-shading. Experiments show that representations based on directional information are more robust to noise than representations based on height information. Moreover, the method can be operated using a simple non-exhaustive parameter adjustment procedure and ensures that the recovered surface satisfies the image irradiance equation as a hard constraint subject to integrability conditions. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.