Illumination-robust face recognition using an efficient mirror technique

In this paper, we propose a novel illumination compensation method for face recognition under variable lighting. This method using an efficient mirror technique can solve the drawbacks of the traditional algorithms such as histogram equalization (HE) and region-based histogram equalization (RHE). Among others, the proposed method has the following advantages: (1) it is very simple so it is easily implemented in a real-time face recognition system; (2) it is able to reinforce key facial features and to standardize other parts of the face; and (3) it can apply directly to single face image without any prior information of light source direction. The experimental results on the Yale B database reveal that the proposed method has rather excellent recognition accuracy.