3D Face Pose Normalization Using Equipartition Fitting Sphere Representation of Shape

Pose normalization is a necessary process of 3D face recognition. Automatic and robust normalization is still a challenge to existing techniques. We propose a novel method called Equipartition Fitting Sphere Representation (EPFSR) for shape representation. Convexes on face are localized firstly based on EPFSR. Then the tip and orientation of nose are identified automatically from convexes by template matching. Extensive experiments are performed on five popular 3D face databases. Results show the high robustness of the proposed methods to expression variations. Accuracy of nose identification is more than 97.7%. Time cost depends on the number of face vertices. It takes averagely less than 9 seconds to localize the nose on a 3D head including around 80000 vertices in the FRGC2.0 database.