Neighbourhood preserving discriminant embedding in face recognition

In this paper, we present an effective technique on discriminative feature extraction for face recognition. The proposed technique incorporates Graph Embedding and the Fisher's criterion where we call it as Neighbourhood Preserving Discriminant Embedding (NPDE). Utilizing the Graph Embedding criterion, the underlying nonlinear face data structure is revealed as representative and discriminative features for analysis. We employ Neighbourhood Preserving Embedding (NPE) for the purpose. NPE takes into account the restriction that neighbouring points in the high-dimensional space must remain within the same neighbourhood in the low dimension space and be located in a similar relative spatial situation (without changing the local structure of the nearest neighbours of each data point). Furthermore, by taking the advantage of the Fisher's criterion, the discriminating power of NPDE is further boosted. Based on this intuition, NPIDE obtains better discriminative capability and experimentally verified in ORL, PIE and FRGC. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.