Abstract
In this study, we develop a central profile-based 3D face pose estimation algorithm. The central profile is a unique curve on a 3D face surface that starts from forehead center, goes down through nose ridge, nose tip, mouth center, and ends at a chin tip. The points on the central profile are co-planar and belong to a symmetry plane that separates human face into two identical parts. The central profile is protrusive and has a certain length. Most importantly, the normal vectors of the central profile points are parallel to the symmetry plane. Based on the properties of the central profile, Hough transform is employed to determine the symmetry plane by invoking a voting procedure. An objective function is introduced in the parameter space to quantify the vote importance for face profile points and map the central profile to an accumulator cell with the maximal value. Subsequently, a nose model matching algorithm is used to detect nose tip on the central profile. A pitch angle estimation algorithm is also proposed. The pose estimation experiments completed for a synthetic 3D face model and the FRGC v2.0 3D database demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed pose estimation algorithm. The obtained central profile detection rate is 99.9%, and the nose tip detection rate has reached 98.16% with error not larger than 10mm.
•We propose a 3D face pose estimation algorithm based on the central profile.•We define an objective function for evaluating face profiles.•We use Hough transform to search symmetry plane in parameter space.•We report accurate central profile and nose tip detection results.