Face identification using novel frequency-domain representation of facial asymmetry

Face recognition is a challenging task. This paper introduces a novel set of biometrics, defined in the frequency domain and representing a form of "facial asymmetry." A comparison with existing spatial asymmetry measures suggests that the frequency-domain representation provides an efficient approach for performing human identification in the presence of severe expressions and for expression classification. Error rates of less than 5% are observed for human identification and around 25% for expression classification on a database of 55 individuals. Feature analysis indicates that asymmetry of the different face parts helps in these two apparently conflicting classification problems. An interesting connection between asymmetry and the Fourier domain phase spectra is then established. Finally, a compact one-bit frequency-domain representation of asymmetry is introduced, and a simplistic Hamming distance classifier is shown to be more efficient than traditional classifiers from storage and the computation point of view, while producing equivalent human identification results. In addition, the application of these compact measures to verification and a statistical analysis are presented