Electromyography-Informed Facial Expression Reconstruction for Physiological-Based Synthesis and Analysis

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Büchner, Tim, Anders, Christoph, Guntinas-Lichius, Orlando, Denzler, Joachim
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Büchner, Tim
Anders, Christoph
Guntinas-Lichius, Orlando
Denzler, Joachim
author_facet Büchner, Tim
Anders, Christoph
Guntinas-Lichius, Orlando
Denzler, Joachim
contents The relationship between muscle activity and resulting facial expressions is crucial for various fields, including psychology, medicine, and entertainment. The synchronous recording of facial mimicry and muscular activity via surface electromyography (sEMG) provides a unique window into these complex dynamics. Unfortunately, existing methods for facial analysis cannot handle electrode occlusion, rendering them ineffective. Even with occlusion-free reference images of the same person, variations in expression intensity and execution are unmatchable. Our electromyography-informed facial expression reconstruction (EIFER) approach is a novel method to restore faces under sEMG occlusion faithfully in an adversarial manner. We decouple facial geometry and visual appearance (e.g., skin texture, lighting, electrodes) by combining a 3D Morphable Model (3DMM) with neural unpaired image-to-image translation via reference recordings. Then, EIFER learns a bidirectional mapping between 3DMM expression parameters and muscle activity, establishing correspondence between the two domains. We validate the effectiveness of our approach through experiments on a dataset of synchronized sEMG recordings and facial mimicry, demonstrating faithful geometry and appearance reconstruction. Further, we synthesize expressions based on muscle activity and how observed expressions can predict dynamic muscle activity. Consequently, EIFER introduces a new paradigm for facial electromyography, which could be extended to other forms of multi-modal face recordings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_09556
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Electromyography-Informed Facial Expression Reconstruction for Physiological-Based Synthesis and Analysis
Büchner, Tim
Anders, Christoph
Guntinas-Lichius, Orlando
Denzler, Joachim
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The relationship between muscle activity and resulting facial expressions is crucial for various fields, including psychology, medicine, and entertainment. The synchronous recording of facial mimicry and muscular activity via surface electromyography (sEMG) provides a unique window into these complex dynamics. Unfortunately, existing methods for facial analysis cannot handle electrode occlusion, rendering them ineffective. Even with occlusion-free reference images of the same person, variations in expression intensity and execution are unmatchable. Our electromyography-informed facial expression reconstruction (EIFER) approach is a novel method to restore faces under sEMG occlusion faithfully in an adversarial manner. We decouple facial geometry and visual appearance (e.g., skin texture, lighting, electrodes) by combining a 3D Morphable Model (3DMM) with neural unpaired image-to-image translation via reference recordings. Then, EIFER learns a bidirectional mapping between 3DMM expression parameters and muscle activity, establishing correspondence between the two domains. We validate the effectiveness of our approach through experiments on a dataset of synchronized sEMG recordings and facial mimicry, demonstrating faithful geometry and appearance reconstruction. Further, we synthesize expressions based on muscle activity and how observed expressions can predict dynamic muscle activity. Consequently, EIFER introduces a new paradigm for facial electromyography, which could be extended to other forms of multi-modal face recordings.
title Electromyography-Informed Facial Expression Reconstruction for Physiological-Based Synthesis and Analysis
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.09556