Human face recognition using a spatially weighted Hausdorff distance

Abstract

The edge map of a facial image contains abundant information about its shape and structure, which is useful for face recognition. To compare edge images, Hausdroff distance is an efficient measure that can determine the degree of their resemblance, and does not require a knowledge of correspondence among those points in the two edge maps. In this paper, a new modified Hausdorff distance measure is proposed, which has a better noise immunity capability and better discriminant power. As the different facial regions have different relative importance for face recognition, the modified Hausdorff distance is weighted according to a weighted function derived from the spatial. information of the human face; hence crucial regions are emphasized for face identification. Experimental results show that the distance measure can achieve recognition rates of 82%, 93%, and 97% for the first, the first three, and the first five likely matched faces, respectively.