3D Face Recognition Using Shapes of Facial Curves

Recognition of human beings using shapes of their full facial surfaces is a difficult problem. Our approach is to approximate a facial surface using a collection of (closed) facial curves, and to compare surfaces by comparing their corresponding curves. The differences between shapes of curves are quantified using lengths of geodesic paths between them on a pre-defined curve shape space. The metric for comparing facial surfaces is a composition of the metric involving individual facial curves. These ideas are demonstrated in the context of face recognition using the nearest-neighbor classifier