Facial Recognition Technology
Face
recognition (in computer vision) can be formulated
as a senario where a given still images of a scene,
identify or verify one or more persons in the scene
using a stored database of stored faces.
Three-dimensional face recognition (3D face
recognition) is a modality of facial recognition
methods in which the three-dimensional geometry of
the human face is used.
The main technological limitation of 3D face
recognition methods is the acquisition of 3D images,
which usually requires a range camera. This is also
a reason why 3D face recognition methods have
emerged significantly later (in the late 1980s) than
2D methods. Recently commercial solutions have
implemented depth perception by projecting a grid
onto the face and integrating video capture of it
into a high resolution 3D model. This allows for
good recognition accuracy with low cost
off-the-shelf components.
Currently, 3D face recognition is still an open
research field, though several vendors already offer
commercial solutions. The first international
workshop to deal specifically with 3D face
processing will be held at CVPR 2008.