Wide baseline image registration using prior information

Establishing correspondence between features in two images of the same scene taken from different viewing angles is a challenging problem in image processing and computer vision. However, its solution is an important step in many applications like wide baseline stereo, 3D model alignment, creation of panoramic views etc.In this paper, we propose a technique for registration of two images of a face obtained from different viewing angles. We show that prior information about the general characteristics of a face obtained from video sequences of different faces can be used to design a robust correspondence algorithm. The method works by matching 2D shapes of the different features of the face (e.g. eyes, nose etc.). A doubly stochastic matrix, representing the probability of match between the features, is derived using the Sinkhorn normalization procedure. The final correspondence is obtained by minimizing the probability of error of a match between the entire constellation of features in the two sets, thus taking into account the global spatial configuration of the features. The method is applied for creating holistic 3D models of a face from partial representations. Although this paper focuses primarily on faces, the algorithm can also be used for other objects with small modifications.