Learning Descriptors Invariance through Equivalence Relations within Manifold: A New Approach to Expression Invariant 3D Face Recognition

This paper presents a unique approach for the dichotomy between useful and adverse variations of key-point descriptors, namely the identity and the expression variations in the descriptor (feature) space. The descriptors variations are learned from training examples. Based on labels of the training data, the equivalence relations among the descriptors are established. Both types of descriptor variations are represented by a graph embedded in the descriptor manifold. Invariant recognition is then conducted as a graph search problem. A heuristic graph search algorithm suitable for the recognition under this setup was devised. The proposed approach was tested on the FRGC v2.0, the Bosphorus and the 3D TEC datasets. It has shown to enhance the recognition performance, under expression variations, by considerable margins.