Wide baseline image registration with application to 3-D face modeling

Establishing correspondence between features in two images of the same scene taken from different viewing angles is a challenging problem in image processing and computer vision. However, its solution is an important step in many applications like wide baseline stereo, three-dimensional (3-D) model alignment, creation of panoramic views, etc. In this paper, we propose a technique for registration of two images of a face obtained from different viewing angles. We show that prior information about the general characteristics of a face obtained from video sequences of different faces can be used to design a robust correspondence algorithm. The method works by matching two-dimensional (2-D) shapes of the different features of the face (e.g., eyes, nose etc.). A doubly stochastic matrix, representing the probability of match between the features, is derived using the Sinkhorn normalization procedure. The final correspondence is obtained by minimizing the probability of error of a match between the entire constellation of features in the two sets, thus taking into account the global spatial configuration of the features. The method is applied for creating holistic 3-D models of a face from partial representations. Although this paper focuses primarily on faces, the algorithm can also be used for other objects with small modifications.