Illumination invariant object recognition

Varying illumination is severe problem for existing face recognition algorithms. Altering the light direction from left to right, for example, causes a change of contrast in large face regions and causes most face recognition algorithms to fail. Theoretical results, based on the law of incoherent light superposition, provide the solid ground on which a new illumination invariant recognition algorithm is derived. A face recognition experiment demonstrates that this algorithm indeed shows improved recognition performance even if the conditions, for which the theoretical results were derived, do not hold exactly