On the use of phase of the Fourier transform for face recognition under variations in illumination

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a representation of the face image based on the phase of the 2-D Fourier transform of the image to overcome the adverse effect of illumination. The phase of the Fourier transform preserves the locations of the edges of a given face image. The main problem in the use of the phase spectrum is the need for unwrapping of the phase. The problem of unwrapping is avoided by considering two functions of the phase spectrum rather than the phase directly. Each of these functions gives partial evidence of the given face image. The effect of noise is reduced by using the first few eigenvectors of the eigenanalysis on the two phase functions separately. Experimental results on combining the evidences from the two phase functions show that the proposed method provides an alternative representation of the face images for dealing with the issue of illumination in face recognition.