Affine Local Descriptors for Viewpoint Invariant Face Recognition

Face recognition under controlled settings, such as limited viewpoint and illumination change, can achieve good performance nowadays. However, real world application for face recognition is still challenging. In this paper, we use Affine SIFT to detect affine invariant local descriptors for face recognition under large viewpoint change. Affine SIFT is an extension of SIFT algorithm. SIFT algorithm is scale and rotation invariant, which is powerful for small viewpoint changes in face recognition, but it fails when large viewpoint change exists. In our scheme, Affine SIFT is used for both gallery face and probe face, which generates a series of different viewpoints using affine transformation. Therefore, Affine SIFT allows viewpoint difference between gallery face and probe face. Experiment results show our framework achieves better recognition accuracy than SIFT algorithm on FERET database.