Distinctiveness of faces: a computational approach

11Distinctiveness of Faces: A Computational ApproachMANUELE BICEGO, ENRICO GROSSO, and ANDREA LAGORIODEIR—University of SassariGAVIN BRELSTAFFCRS4, PolarisLINDA BRODODSL—University of SassariandMASSIMO TISTARELLIDAP—University of SassariThis paper develops and demonstrates an original approach to face-image analysis based on identifying distinctive areas of eachindividual’s face by its comparison to others in the population. The method differs from most others—that we refer asunary—where salient regions are defined by analyzing only images of the same individual. We extract a set of multiscale patches fromeach face image before projecting them into a common feature space. The degree of “distinctiveness” of any patch depends on itsdistance in feature space from patches mapped from other individuals. First a pairwise analysis is developed and then a simplegeneralization to the multiple-face case is proposed. A perceptual experiment, involving 45 observers, indicates the method to befairly compatible with how humans mark faces as distinct. A quantitative example of face authentication is also performed inorder to show the essential role played by the distinctive information. A comparative analysis shows that performance of our n-aryapproach is as good as several contemporary unary, or binary, methods, while tapping a complementary source of information.Furthermore, we show it can also provide a useful degree of illumination invariance.