Research Project (1993, 1994)

Face recognition by elastic bunch graph matching

Laurenz Wiskott, Jean-Marc Fellous, Norbert Krüger, and Christoph von der Malsburg


Face recognition is an example of an in-class recognition task. All models in the gallery have the same geometrical structure. We have therefore defined labeled graphs which are tailored to this structure. Since we want to recognize faces from different views, the nodes of the graphs consistently refer to particular fiducial points, such as the eyes, the tip of the nose, some contour points, etc., see the figure.

face graphs (31 kB)

Figure: Graphs for faces in different views.

Since the system has to deal with large galleries, we could not afford to match each model to a new face separately, as was done in the preceding system [LadVorBuh93]. Instead, a more general face representation, the face bunch graph, was constituted from 70 models. This is then matched only once on a new face to find the facial landmarks. The image graph, which is created by this elastic graph matching can then be compared to large galleries of several hundred faces without need of repeated matching.

The recognition results of this system are good on identical poses, e.g. frontal views against frontal views. However, across different poses, e.g. frontal views against half profiles, the system performs rather poorly. This task turned out to be much harder.


Relevant Publications:

Black colored reference are the principal ones. Gray colored references are listed for the sake of completeness only. They contain little additional information. .ps-files are optimized for printing; .pdf-files are optimized for viewing at the computer.

  1. Wiskott, L. and von der Malsburg, C. (13. May 2003).
    Labeled bunch graphs for image analysis.
    United States Patent 6,563,950.
    (bibtex, abstract.html, paper)

  2. Wiskott, L. and von der Malsburg, C. (12. March 2002).
    Labeled bunch graphs for image analysis.
    United States Patent 6,356,659.
    (bibtex, abstract.html, paper)

  3. Wiskott, L. and von der Malsburg, C. (24. April 2001).
    Labeled bunch graphs for image analysis.
    United States Patent 6,222,939.
    (bibtex, abstract.html, paper)

  4. Wiskott, L., Fellous, J.M., Krüger, N., and von der Malsburg, C. (1999).
    Face recognition by elastic bunch graph matching.
    In Intelligent Biometric Techniques in Fingerprint and Face Recognition, eds. L.C. Jain et al., publ. CRC Press, ISBN 0-8493-2055-0, Chapter 11, pp. 355-396.
    (bibtex, abstract.html, paper.pdf, paper.ps.gz)

  5. Wiskott, L., Fellous, J.M., Krüger, N., and von der Malsburg, C. (26. October 1997).
    Face recognition by elastic bunch graph matching.
    Proc. IEEE Int'l Conf. on Image Processing, ICIP'97, Santa Barbara, Oct. 26-29, vol. I pp. 129-132.
    (bibtex, abstract.html)

  6. Wiskott, L., Fellous, J.M., Krüger, N., and von der Malsburg, C. (10. September 1997).
    Face recognition by elastic bunch graph matching.
    Proc. 7th Int'l Conf. on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns, CAIP'97, Kiel, Sep. 10-12, eds. G. Sommer, K. Daniilidis, and J. Pauli, number 1296 in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, publ. Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, pp. 456-463.
    (bibtex, abstract.html)

  7. Fellous, J.M., Wiskott, L., Krüger, N., and von der Malsburg, C. (1997).
    Face recognition by elastic bunch graph matching.
    Proc. Int'l Conf. on Vision, Recognition, Action: Neural Models of Mind and Machine, Boston, May 28-31, publ. Boston University, (abstract).
    (bibtex, abstract.html)

  8. Wiskott, L., Fellous, J.M., Krüger, N., and von der Malsburg, C. (1997).
    Face recognition by elastic bunch graph matching.
    IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 19(7):775-779.
    (bibtex, abstract.html, paper.ps.gz)

  9. Wiskott, L., Fellous, J.M., Krüger, N., and von der Malsburg, C. (1996).
    Face recognition by elastic bunch graph matching.
    Internal report, IR-INI 96-08, Institut für Neuroinformatik, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany, 21 pages.
    (bibtex, abstract.html)

  10. Wiskott, L. (1995).
    Labeled graphs and dynamic link matching for face recognition and scene analysis.
    Verlag Harri Deutsch, Thun - Frankfurt am Main, Reihe Physik 53 (PhD thesis), ISBN 3-8171-1481-8, 110 pages.
    (bibtex, abstract.html, paper.pdf, paper.ps.gz)

  11. Wiskott, L., Fellous, J.M., Krüger, N., and von der Malsburg, C. (1995).
    Face recognition and gender determination.
    Proc. Int'l Workshop on Automatic Face- and Gesture- Recognition, IWAFGR'95, Zurich, June 26-28, ed. Martin Bichsel, publ. MultiMedia Laboratory, University of Zurich, pp. 92-97.
    (bibtex, abstract.html, paper.ps.gz, paper.ps.gz, paper)


Related Projects:


setup April, 1996; updated April 14, 2005
Laurenz Wiskott, http://www.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/PEOPLE/wiskott/