Wavelet local binary patterns fusion as illuminated facial image preprocessing for face verification

Poor illumination condition is recognized as one of the major problem in contemporary two-dimensional (2D) face verification system. It causes large variation in facial images and degrades the performance of the system. Many works of resolving illumination variation in face verification have been reported in the past decades. In this paper, a facial image illumination invariant technique is devised based on the fusion of wavelet analysis and local binary patterns. Particularly, illumination-reflectance model is used to detach illumination and reflectance components with multi-resolution nature of wavelet analysis. The illumination component that resides in low spatial-frequency wavelet subband is first rid off efficiently. The reflectance components that reside in high and middle spatial-frequency wavelet subbands are enhanced with local binary patterns histogram. Finally, two processed images are fused through wavelet image fusion. This technique works out promisingly in achieving better recognition results on YaleB, CMU PIE and FRGC face databases in comparison with existing illumination invariant techniques.