Face Recognition Using Eye Perturbation Experiments

This paper provides an up-to-date critical survey of still- and video-based face recognition research. There are two underlying motivations for us to write this survey paper: the first is to provide an up-to-date review of the existing literature, and the second is to offer some insights into the studies of machine recognition of faces. To provide a comprehensive survey, we not only categorize existing recognition techniques but also present detailed descriptions of representative methods within each category. In addition, relevant topics such as psychophysical studies, system evaluation, and issues of illumination and pose variation are covered. To investigate its importance, we present an eye perturbation sensitivity analysis, as well as empirical evidence that reinforces the notion that eye localization plays a key role in the accuracy of face recognition systems. In particular, correct measurement of eye separation is shown to be more important than correct eye location, highlighting the critical role of eye separation in the scaling and normalization of face images. Results suggest that significant gains in recognition accuracy may be achieved by focusing more effort on the eye localization stage of the face recognition process.