FACIAL METAMORPHOSIS USING GEOMETRICAL METHODS FOR BIOMETRIC APPLICATIONS

Abstract

Facial expression modeling has been a popular topic in biometrics for many years. One of the emerging recent trends is capturing subtle details such as wrinkles, creases and minor imperfections that are highly important for biometric modeling as well as matching. In this paper, we suggest a novel approach to the problem of expression modeling and morphing based on a geometry-based paradigm. In 2D image space, a distance-based morphing system is utilized to create a line drawing style facial animation from two input images representing frontal and profile views of the face. Aging wrinkles and expression lines are extracted and mapped back to the synthesized facial NPR (nonphotorealistic) sketches. In 3D object space, we present a metamorphosis system that combines the traditional free-form deformation (FFD) model with data interpolation techniques based on the proximity preserving Voronoi diagram. With feature points selected from two images of the target face, the proposed system generates the 3D target facial model by transforming a generic model. Experimental results demonstrate that morphing sequences generated by our systems are of convincing quality.