Ultra fast GPU assisted face recognition based on 3D geometry and texture data

Face recognition represents a challenging research topic which has been investigated by means of many techniques operating either in 2D or 3D, and, more recently, even through multi-modal approaches. Whatever the methodology used to compare any two faces, the main concern has been on recognition accuracy, often disregarding the efficiency issue which may be crucial in a large scale one-to-many recognition application. This paper presents a Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) assisted face recognition method, operating on 4D data (geometry + texture). It exploits augmented normal map, a 32 bit deep color bitmap, as face descriptor, allowing ultra fast face comparison through the specialized hardware (pixel shaders) available in almost any recently designed PC graphic boards. The proposed approach addresses facial expression changes and presence of beard by means of two (subject specific) filtering masks. We include preliminary experimental results on a large gallery of faces.