Face Recognition by Curvelet Based Feature Extraction

This paper proposes a new method for face recognition based on a multiresolution analysis tool called Digital Curvelet Transform. Multiresolution ideas notably the wavelet transform have been profusely employed for addressing the problem of face recognition. However, theoretical studies indicate, digital curvelet transform to be an even better method than wavelets. In this paper, the feature extraction has been done by taking the curvelet transforms of each of the original image and its quantized 4 bit and 2 bit representations. The curvelet coefficients thus obtained act as the feature set for classification. These three sets of coefficients from the three different versions of images are then used to train three Support Vector Machines. During testing, the results of the three SVMs are fused to determine the final classification. The experiments were carried out on three well known databases, viz., the Georgia Tech Face Database, AT&T "The Database of Faces" and the Essex Grimace Face Database.