Face Recognition in Complex Unconstrained Environment with An Enhanced WWN Algorithm

Abstract

Face recognition is one of the core and challenging issues in computer vision field. Compared to computer vision, human visual system can identify a target from complex backgrounds quickly and accurately. This paper proposes a new network model deriving from Where-What Networks (WWNs), which can approximately simulate the information processing pathways (i.e., dorsal pathway and ventral pathway) of human visual cortex and recognize different types of faces with different locations and sizes in complex background. To enhance the recognition performance, synapse maintenance mechanism and neuron regenesis mechanism are both introduced. Synapse maintenance is used to reduce the background interference while neuron regenesis mechanism is introduced to regulate the neuron resource dynamically to improve the network usage efficiency. Experiments have been conducted on human face images of 5 types, 11 sizes, and 225 locations in complex backgrounds. Experiment results demonstrate that the proposed WWN model can basically learn three concepts (type, location and size) simultaneously. The experiment results also show the advantages of the enhanced WWN-7 model for face recognition in comparison with several existing methods.

Keywords

• face recognition
• where-what networks
• synapse maintenance mechanism
• neuron regenesis mechanism