3D face detection and face recognition: state of the art and trends

Face detection and recognition are old but rapidly growing research areas due to increasing demands for security in industrial and law enforcement applications. Face recognition based on two-dimensional (2D) images have reached a significant level of maturity with some practical success. However the performance of 2D face recognition may degrade under poor illumination conditions, pose changing or for subjects of various skin colors. 3D face recognition represents a viable alternative to 2D face recognition in the research for a robust and practical identification system. This paper provides a review of research achievement in face recognition from 2007 to present. This survey mainly include three parts: (1) advances in face detections, (2) state of the art of 3D face recognition and (3) face images database and face recognition algorithm evaluation. Recent research has also demonstrated that the fusion of 2D and 3D face recognition can improve the overall performance of face recognition algorithm.