Illuminating light field: image-based face recognition across illuminations and poses

We present an image-based method for face recognition across different illuminations and different poses, where the term 'image-based' means that only 2D images are used and no explicit 3D models are needed. As face recognition across illuminations and poses involves three factors, namely identity, illumination, and pose, generalizations from known identities to novel identities, from known illuminations to novel illuminations, and from known poses to unknown poses are desired. Our approach, called the illuminating light field, derives an identity signature that is invariant to illuminations and poses, where a subspace encoding is assumed for the identity, a Lambertain reflectance model for the illumination, and a light field model for the poses. Experimental results using the PIE database demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.