Utilization of 3D data in face recognition

As the need and investment for security applications grow vastly, one particular topic has certainly been attracting higher attention than many other pattern recognition fields: biometrics - recognition of humans based on their physical and/or behavioral traits. Among those traits, face stands out with its favorable reconcilement between accessibility and reliability. In this doctoral dissertation, we principally investigate 3D shape which is a relatively more recent modality in face recognition. Being advantageous to its 2D counterpart for being intrinsically invariant to illumination and pose changes, 3D face recognition still encounters major challenges such as acquisition inadequacy or facial surface deformations due to expressions or occlusion. Bearing those in mind, a thorough study is carried out on this topic, including pre-processing of 3D facial data, automatic landmarking, facial expression and alteration simulations in 3D, 3D feature extraction and 3D regional surface analysis.