Resurrection of Our Ancestors : 3D face reconstruction of historical images and its use in face recognition

Abstract: In the field of face recognition one challenge is to recognize individuals in photographs taken of the person in profile. In this project it was investigated whether 3D face reconstructions could improve the face recognition results in these cases. Images used in the experiments were historical images of persons who lived in Stockholm during the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. Additionally, face frontalization algorithms were applied to images taken in profile-view of the person to investigate if this idea could improve the results of 3D face reconstruction of images in profile-view. The results of the experiments showed that using 3D face reconstructions did not improve the results of face recognition. However, in most cases the individuals in the 3D face reconstructions could be recognized. Furthermore, experiments also showed that face frontalization did not improve the results of the 3D face reconstructions of images taken in profile angle. Aside from these results, the thesis demonstrates a, to the best of our knowledge, new approach to evaluate 3D face reconstruction results by using face recognition.