Registration of expressions data using a 3D morphable model

The registration of 3D scans of faces is a key step for many applications, in particular for building 3D morphable models. Although a number of algorithms are already available for registering data with neutral expression, the registration of scans with arbitrary expressions is typically performed under the assumption of a known, fixed identity. We present a novel algorithm which breaks this restriction, allowing to register 3D scans of faces with arbitrary identity and expression. Furthermore, our algorithm can process incomplete data, yielding results which are both continuous and with low reconstruction error. Even in the case of complete, expression-less data, our method can yield better results than previous algorithms, due to an adaptive smoothing, which regularizes the results surface only where the estimated correspondence is unreliable