Combining illumination normalization methods for better face recognition

Abstract

Face Recognition under uncontrolled illumination conditions is partly an unsolved problem. There are two categories of illumination normalization methods. The first category performs a local preprocessing, where they correct a pixel value based on a local neighborhood in the images. The second category performs a global preprocessing step, where the illumination conditions and the face shape of the entire image are estimated. We use two illumination normalization methods from both categories, namely Local Binary Patterns and Model-based Face Illumination Correction. The preprocessed face images of both methods are individually classified with a face recognition algorithm which gives us two similarity scores for a face image. We combine the similarity scores using score-level fusion, decision-level fusion and hybrid fusion. In our previous work, we show that combining the similarity score of different methods using fusion can improve the performance of biometric systems. We achieved a significant performance improvement in comparison with the individual methods. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009.