3D Face Surface Analysis and Recognition Based on Facial Curves

There is an increasing interest in analyzing the shapes of facial surfaces with many applications including facial surgery and 3D animation. This chapter discusses the development of computational tools for analyzing 3D face data, comparing the shapes of facial surfaces. Such tools can be used to recognize human beings according to their facial shapes, to measure changes in a facial shape due to a surgery, or to study/capture the variations in facial shapes during conversations and expressions of emotions. The chapter provides an illustration of the shape space and geodesic path between two elements of that space. The chapter defines a dense scalar field (DSF) capable of capturing deformations between two corresponding radial curves of two faces approximated by a collection of radial curves.