Face description based on decomposition and combining of a facial space with LDA

We propose a method of efficient face description for facial image retrieval from a large data set. The novel descriptor is obtained by decomposing the face image into several components and then combining the component features. The decomposition combined with LDA (linear discriminant analysis) provides discriminative facial features that are less sensitive to light and pose changes. Each component is represented in its Fisher space and another LDA is then applied to compactly combine the features of the components. To enhance retrieval accuracy further, a simple pose classification and transformation technique is performed, followed by recursive matching. The experimental results obtained on the MPEG-7 data set show an impressive accuracy of our algorithm as compared with the conventional PCA/ICA/LDA methods.