ملخص: Appearance variations result in many difficulties in face image analysis. To deal with this challenge, we present a Unified Tensor-based Active Appearance Model (UT-AAM) for jointly modelling the geometry and texture information of 2D faces. In contrast with the classical Tensor-based AAM (T-AAM), the proposed UT-AAM has four advantages: First, for each type of face information, namely shape and texture, we construct a tensor model capturing all relevant appearance variations. This unified tensor model contrasts with the variation-specific models of T-AAM. Second, a strategy for dealing with self-occluded faces is proposed to obtain consistent shape and texture representations of faces across large pose variations. Third, our UT-AAM is capable of constructing the model from an incomplete training dataset, using tensor completion methods. Last, we use an effective cascaded-regression-based method for UT-AAM fitting. With these improvements, the utility of UT-AAM in practice is considerably enhanced in comparison with the classical T-AAM. As an example, we demonstrate the improvements in training facial landmark detectors through the use of UT-AAM to synthesise a large number of virtual samples. Experimental results obtained using the Multi-PIE and 300-W face datasets demonstrate the merits of the proposed approach.

لغة: إنجليزية