An end-to-end face recognition method with alignment learning

Many effective methods have been proposed for face recognition in the past decade and the face recognition accuracy is also gradually improved, but these algorithms usually need to perform face alignment process based on the prior knowledge of facial structure before extracting facial features. The face recognition system usually consists of face detection, face alignment, facial feature extraction, etc., which are independent of each other, and it is difficult to design and train the end-to-end face recognition model. In this paper, an end-to-end face recognition method based on spatial transformation layer is proposed. Specifically, the spatial transformation layer is placed in front of the feature extraction layer of the face recognition network, and the face region is aligned by alignment learning which requires neither prior knowledge nor artificially defined geometric transformation. The face identity category information allows the convolutional neural network to automatically learn the most appropriate face alignment. Simulation experiments on CASIA-WebFace, LFW (Labeled Face in the Wild) and YTF (Youtube Face) face database have shown that the suggested alignment learning algorithm in this paper can realize the end-to-end face recognition and can effectively improve the face recognition rate as well.