Combining Models and Exemplars for Face Recognition: An Illuminating Example

Abstract

We propose a model- and exemplar-based approach for face recognition. This problem has been previously tackled using either models or exemplars, with limited success. Our idea uses models to synthesize many more exemplars, which are then used in the learning stage of a face recognition system. To demonstrate this, we develop a statistical shape-from-shading model to recover face shape from a single image, and to synthesize the same face under new illumination. We then use this to build a simple and fast classifier that was not possible before because of a lack of training data.