Norface: Improving Facial Expression Analysis by Identity Normalization

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Liu, Hanwei, An, Rudong, Zhang, Zhimeng, Ma, Bowen, Zhang, Wei, Song, Yan, Hu, Yujing, Chen, Wei, Ding, Yu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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_version_ 1866929430470852608
author Liu, Hanwei
An, Rudong
Zhang, Zhimeng
Ma, Bowen
Zhang, Wei
Song, Yan
Hu, Yujing
Chen, Wei
Ding, Yu
author_facet Liu, Hanwei
An, Rudong
Zhang, Zhimeng
Ma, Bowen
Zhang, Wei
Song, Yan
Hu, Yujing
Chen, Wei
Ding, Yu
contents Facial Expression Analysis remains a challenging task due to unexpected task-irrelevant noise, such as identity, head pose, and background. To address this issue, this paper proposes a novel framework, called Norface, that is unified for both Action Unit (AU) analysis and Facial Emotion Recognition (FER) tasks. Norface consists of a normalization network and a classification network. First, the carefully designed normalization network struggles to directly remove the above task-irrelevant noise, by maintaining facial expression consistency but normalizing all original images to a common identity with consistent pose, and background. Then, these additional normalized images are fed into the classification network. Due to consistent identity and other factors (e.g. head pose, background, etc.), the normalized images enable the classification network to extract useful expression information more effectively. Additionally, the classification network incorporates a Mixture of Experts to refine the latent representation, including handling the input of facial representations and the output of multiple (AU or emotion) labels. Extensive experiments validate the carefully designed framework with the insight of identity normalization. The proposed method outperforms existing SOTA methods in multiple facial expression analysis tasks, including AU detection, AU intensity estimation, and FER tasks, as well as their cross-dataset tasks. For the normalized datasets and code please visit {https://norface-fea.github.io/}.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_15617
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Norface: Improving Facial Expression Analysis by Identity Normalization
Liu, Hanwei
An, Rudong
Zhang, Zhimeng
Ma, Bowen
Zhang, Wei
Song, Yan
Hu, Yujing
Chen, Wei
Ding, Yu
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Facial Expression Analysis remains a challenging task due to unexpected task-irrelevant noise, such as identity, head pose, and background. To address this issue, this paper proposes a novel framework, called Norface, that is unified for both Action Unit (AU) analysis and Facial Emotion Recognition (FER) tasks. Norface consists of a normalization network and a classification network. First, the carefully designed normalization network struggles to directly remove the above task-irrelevant noise, by maintaining facial expression consistency but normalizing all original images to a common identity with consistent pose, and background. Then, these additional normalized images are fed into the classification network. Due to consistent identity and other factors (e.g. head pose, background, etc.), the normalized images enable the classification network to extract useful expression information more effectively. Additionally, the classification network incorporates a Mixture of Experts to refine the latent representation, including handling the input of facial representations and the output of multiple (AU or emotion) labels. Extensive experiments validate the carefully designed framework with the insight of identity normalization. The proposed method outperforms existing SOTA methods in multiple facial expression analysis tasks, including AU detection, AU intensity estimation, and FER tasks, as well as their cross-dataset tasks. For the normalized datasets and code please visit {https://norface-fea.github.io/}.
title Norface: Improving Facial Expression Analysis by Identity Normalization
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.15617