Information fusion for local Gabor features based frontal face verification

We address the problem of fusion in a facial component approach to face verification. In our study the facial components are local image windows defined on a regular grid covering the face image. Gabor jets computed in each window provide face representation. A fusion architecture is proposed to combine the face verification evidence conveyed by each facial component. A novel modification of the linear discriminant analysis method is presented that improves fusion performance as well as providing a basis for feature selection. The potential of the method is demonstrated in experiments on the XM2VTS data base.