3D face representation and recognition by Intrinsic Shape Description Maps

We present a novel method for 3D face recognition, in which the 3D facial surface is first mapped into a 2D domain with specified resolution through a global optimization by constrained conformal geometric maps. The Intrinsic Shape Description Map (ISDM) is then constructed through a modeling technique capable to express geometric and appearance information of the 3D face. Hence the 3D surface matching problem can be simplified to a 2D image matching problem, which greatly reduces the computational complexity. Finally, the Intrinsic Shape Description Feature (ISDF) of ISDM and the discrimination analysis can be calculated. Experimental results implemented on GavabDB demonstrate that our proposed method significantly outperforms the existing methods with respect to pose variation.