A comparative study on illumination preprocessing in face recognition

Illumination preprocessing is an effective and efficient approach in handling lighting variations for face recognition. Despite much attention to face illumination preprocessing, there is seldom systemic comparative study on existing approaches that presents fascinating insights and conclusions in how to design better illumination preprocessing methods. To fill this vacancy, we provide a comparative study of 12 representative illumination preprocessing methods (HE, LT, GIC, DGD, LoG, SSR, GHP, SQI, LDCT, LTV, LN and TT) from two novel perspectives: (1) localization for holistic approach and (2) integration of large-scale and small-scale feature bands. Experiments on public face databases (YaleBExt, CMU-PIE, CAS-PEAL and FRGC V2.0) with illumination variations suggest that localization for holistic illumination preprocessing methods (HE, GIC, LTV and TT) further improves the performance. Integration of large-scale and small-scale feature bands for reflectance field estimation based illumination preprocessing approaches (SSR, GHP, SQI, LDCT, LTV and TT) is also found helpful for illumination-insensitive face recognition.

► Illumination preprocessing methods are analyzed and grouped from their principles.
► Twelve lighting preprocessing methods are systemically tested in public face databases.
► We provide insight into lighting preprocessing methods from two novel perspectives.
► Conclusions on designing better illumination preprocessing methods are drawn.