Shape-from-shading driven 3D Morphable Models for Illumination Insensitive Face Recognition

Abstract

In this paper we present a method for face shape and albedo estimation which uses a morphable model in conjunction with non-Lambertian shape-from-shading. We use surface normal and albedo estimates to construct a spherical harmonic basis which can be used generatively to model face appearance variation under arbitrarily complex illumination. This allows us to perform illumination insensitive face recognition given only a single gallery image. In contrast to other similar methods, our surface normal and albedo estimates are not constrained by a statistical model and are instead inferred from shading cues. We present recognition results on the Yale Face Database B.