Gaze correction with a single webcam

Eye contact is a critical aspect of human communication. However, when talking over a video conferencing system, such as Skype, it is not possible for users to have eye contact when looking at the conversation partner´s face displayed on the screen. This is due to the location disparity between the video conferencing window and the camera. This issue has been tackled by expensive high-end systems or hybrid depth+color cameras, but such equipment is still largely unavailable at the consumer level and on platforms such as laptops or tablets. In contrast, we propose a gaze correction method that needs just a single webcam. We apply recent shape deformation techniques to generate a 3D face model that matches the user´s face. We then render a gaze-corrected version of this face model and seamlessly insert it into the original image. Experiments on real data and various platforms confirm the validity of the approach and demonstrate that the visual quality of our results is at least equivalent to those obtained by state-of-the-art methods requiring additional equipment.