A Photometric Stereo Approach to Face Recognition by Roger Woodman

Face recognition has received much interest in the last decade, as the need for reliable personal identification security has become ever more critical. At present for face recognition to be a viable personal identification method an accurate low cost solution is required. Many two-dimensional (2D) face recognition systems have been implemented, which demonstrate the potential of using face recognition, although at present these systems are often unreliable. To produce more reliable face recognition systems, a recent trend has been to use three-dimensional (3D) data, which as research has shown is more accurate and robust than traditional 2D techniques. 3D face recognition systems, however, are often expensive relative to 2D alternatives, as precise capture equipment is required. This research project has identified photometric stereo as a low cost 3D capture system, which has been little researched in the area of face recognition. An investigation is presented, which evaluates the capabilities of photometric stereo for use in the area of face recognition by means of a number of experiments. These experiments are conducted using a photometric stereo system, designed and implemented for this research project. iii Acknowledgments