Comparing faces: a computational and perceptual study

The problem of extracting distinctive parts from a face is addressed. Rather than examining a priori specified features such as nose, eyes, month or others, the aim here is to extract from a face the most distinguishing or dissimilar parts with respect to another given face, i.e. finding differences between faces. A computational approach, based on log polar patch sampling and evaluation, has been compared with results obtained from a newly designed perceptual test involving 45 people. The results of the comparison confirm the potential of the proposed computational method.