Age simulation for face recognition
Junyan Wang, Yan Shang, Guangda Su, Xinggang Lin
Research Institute of Image and Graphics, Dept of Electronic Engineering,
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
wjy01@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn
Abstract
In this paper, an automatic age simulation method
used for robust face recognition is proposed. We first
use a shape and texture vectors to represent a facial
image by projecting it in the eigenspace of shape or
texture. Then we use age function combined with aging
way classification to estimate age. And we use
estimated age, typical vector creating function and the
feature vector of the original test image to generate the
synthesized feature vectors at target age. At last we
reconstruct the shape and texture in eigenspaces and
combine them to synthesize facial image at target age.
Experiments show that the proposed method can
effectively “change” the age of face images, and help
to get face recognition result robust to age variation.
1. Introduction
Face recognition has attracted much attention in
the past decades for its wide potential applications. It
has been one of the most active areas in pattern
recognition and computer vision in the past decades.
Many methods have been proposed for face recognition,
and most of them have been successfully applied to the
task of face recognition, but all the methods have
certain drawbacks. One of the major difficulties is the
aging problem, that is, the performances of most
algorithms degrade significantly when the age
difference between the test face and the queried face
increases [1].
Researchers have developed many methods to
handle the aging problem, most of which were based
on the thought of simulating age effects on facial
images. Burt and Perrett [2] firstly simulated the effect
of age in facial images by using cartoon method to
exaggerate age. Mean faces of different ages are
calculated to synthesize with test image to get new
images. The age of synthesized image is the blending
of the ages of mean face and test image. Changseok Choi
[3] used PCA and 3-D face shape model to extract the
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age change components from 3-D facial images, and
then added the age change components to test image to
synthesize the facial images at different ages. Some
synthesized images with age variation were shown in
that paper. Young H. K. and Niels V. L. [4] researched
face changing along with age. They positioned many
facial parts including eyes, nose, etc, and calculated
some ratios between different facial parts, and
extracted wrinkles by snakelet. Their work showed that
when one person grows up from child to adult, his skull
change largely and when he becomes older form young
adult, the main change is wrinkles. A face recognition
system robust to age variation is proposed by Lanitis A
and Taylor C.J. [5] [6]. They build a face model and an
age function [7] [8] to isolate age change. This method
trains a face model using a feature vector to represent a
face with age information. Then, an age function is
trained to estimate the age of test image and to get the
feature vector of test image at different ages. PCA is
used to get feature vector. The structure of age function
is polynomial. Some simulated face images and a better
recognition rate than traditional PCA are shown in
these papers. This method can get statistical good result.
But because of the limit of age function, this method
can’t get precise result.
In this paper, an automatic age simulation method
for robust face recognition is proposed. The paper is
organized as follows: In the next section, a face
recognition system robust to age variation is proposed.
In the third section, we describe our age simulation
method in details. The experiment results and the
conclusions are given in the last section.
2. Face recognition robust to age variation
In this part, a face recognition system robust to age
variation is proposed, as shown in Fig.1. This system
includes two main processes, age simulation and face
recognition. In age simulation module, face in database
and test face are changed to one same normative age to
eliminate age variations. Face recognition module
 finishes the traditional function of face recognition,
such as recognizing feature extraction, similarity
sorting and recognition result output.
Fig.1 Flow chart of face recognition system using age
simulation
3. Age simulation
Our age simulation system includes 3 parts: facial
feature extraction, age estimation and age simulation.
In the first part, a shape feature vector and a texture
feature vector are extracted to represent a face. In the
second part, age function and aging way classification
are integrated to estimate age. In third part, a pair of
shape feature vector and texture feature vector is
changed to that of the target age.
Face
Test Feature Age Age image
image extraction estimation changing at new
age
Fig.2 Flow chart of age simulation system
Before we extract facial features, in order to get
good simulation result, some preprocessing are done to
improve the image quality, including illumination
normalization, scale adjustment, and so on.
3.1 Facial feature extraction
One face image includes shape information and
pure texture image. So a facial image can be separated
into shape information and texture information. If we
have these two kinds of information, we can
reconstruct a facial image.
3.1.1 Shape and texture information extraction
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The shape information is represented by the
coordinates of 101 landmarks on face (as shown in
Fig.3), and Active Shape Model (ASM [9]) is used to
extract the landmarks. After the landmarks are
positioned, triangle based affine transform is used to
span the face image to a pure texture image at standard
shape. This pure texture image is the texture
information of the face image. Usually we use the
mean shape of a series of faces as the standard shape.
Fig.3 Shape and texture information (The left is
the source image with landmarks extracted by ASM;
the middle is the mean shape and triangulation; the
right one is the pure texture image at mean shape)
3.1.2 Shape and texture vector extraction
We do Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to the
coordinates of the landmarks and the pure texture
images respectively. So we can get a shape eigenspace
and a texture eigenspace. For a given image, after the
projection in the eigenspaces, we can get a shape
feature vector and a texture feature vector. And the
combined feature vector is used for next processing.
3.2 Age estimation
Age estimation is using feature vectors to estimate
the age of the person in face image. It aims to define
the relationship between the actual age and the facial
feature vector. Here we choose aging function for age
estimation. In paper [7], an observation that people
who look similar tend to age in a similar way was
exploited, so appearance specific aging function was
proposed. We think that the people who look similar
may age in dissimilar ways. Such as, the ages of two
people with similar appearance may be different a lot.
The way which a person ages in is named his aging
way. However, we assume that the people who age in
similar ways have similar aging function. So a new age
estimation method is proposed which integrate aging
function and aging way classification.
3.2.1 Aging Function
For a given image, after facial feature extraction,
we got a pair of shape and texture feature vector which
are combined to form facial feature vector. We use age
 function with polynomial structure to indicate the
relationship between the feature vector and the age, as
shown in equation (1).
N 3.3.1 Reconstruct Feature Vector at Target Age
age = f (b) = offset + ¦ ciT (b i )
i =1
In equation (1), age is estimated age, f is aging
function, and b is feature vector, [c1 ,..., c N ] is
parameter vector, and offset is the offset required.
For the age function, we calculate the parameters
trough a set of training samples with known actual ages.
We aim to minimize the error between actual ages and
estimated ages. The rule of minimizing the square error
is adopted. If the aging function is used to all test
images, this function is called global aging function.
3.2.2 Aging Way Classification
The aim of aging way classification is to classify
the people into different classes based on their aging
ways. One people’s face image is classified according
his aging way classification result. The aging way of
one person is represented by a vector which is
composed by the estimation error offered by global
aging function and actual age. For example, a person
has 3 face images at actual age a1 , a 2 , a3 , and the
estimation error of global aging function is e1 , e2 , e3 ,
so his aging way is vector [(a1 , e1 ), (a 2 , e2 ), (a3 , e3 )] .
Use K-mean classification method for aging way
classification. We define the distance between two
aging way as:
N1 2 N2 2 Ba =
e1i e2 i
d= ¦ − ¦ ¦ N σ (a − a ) i
i =1 N 1 i =1 N 2
In equation (2), ei is the estimation error offered by
global aging function, N is number. Then we create age
function for every class. For a test image with feature
vector b, we calculate the similarity to the ith class.
< b ⋅ bj >
si = max{ , j = 1,...ni } (3)
b bj
Where bj is the feature vector of jth sample in ith
class, ni is the number of training samples in ith calss.
So the estimated age of test image is:
k σ is zero, this method become the method of using
¦ s f (b)i i
a= i =1
k lookup table.
¦s
i =1
i
3.3 Reconstruct facial image at target age
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If we can get the feature vectors at target age, the facial
image at target age can be reconstructed.
(1)
After age estimation, what we know is the feature
vector of given image bcur and estimated age cur.
Assume that the feature vector of target age new can be
calculated by a function g.
bnew = g (bcue , new) = bcur + Δb (5)
So, we can get the following equation.
Δb = bnew − bcur ≈ Bnew − Bcur (6)
Where Bnew and Bcur are the typical feature
vectors of target age and estimated age.
So, the feature vector at target age bnew is:
bnew ≈ bcur + ( B new − B cur ) (7)
By varying the feature vector, we can get a series of
vectors corresponding to the same age. The traditional
method is to calculate the mean vector as the typical
feature vector B for every age and build a lookup table.
This method can not create typical feature vector for
the age not in training samples. Here we propose our
method: typical vector creating function.
3.3.2 Typical Vector Creating Function
The typical vector B a of age a is:
n
¦ N σ (a − a )b
i =1
i i
(8)
(2)
n
i =1
Where n is the number of training samples, ai is
the age of ith training sample, bi is the feature vector of
ith training sample, Nσ ( ) is Gauss function with
square variance σ .
Equation (8) is typical vector creating function.
Comparing with the typical vector creating method of
look up table [6], this function can create typical vector
for the age not in training samples. And it can create
typical vector for continuous age. The lookup table
method can not finish these two requests. When we let
(4)
mean feature vector as typical vector to generate
3.3.3 Synthesize the Facial Image at Target Age
The shape and texture at target age can be
reconstructed in eigenspace using equation (9).
 X new = X + Pbnew (9)
Where, X new is the shape or texture at target age,
X is the mean shape or texture, P is eigen matrix,
bnew is the feature vector at target age.
After the shape and texture at target age are
reconstructed, the affine transform based on
triangulation is used to generate the facial image at
target age.
4 Experiments and Conclusions
We use TH aging face database for experiments.
There are 400 images from 60 persons at different ages
in the training set.
Fig.4 Samples in TH aging face database (Each row
contains images of the same people.)
4.1 Age simulation result
Fig.5 Age simulation result
Fig.5 shows the simulation result. The left of
Fig.5 (1) is the source image at age 30, the middle is
the simulated image at target age 20, and the right is
the real image at age 20. The left of Fig.5 (2) is source
image, the second to the fourth one are the simulated
image at age 20, 30, 40, and 50.
4.2 Face recognition result
We use PCA for face recognition. The recognition
results with and without age simulation are show in
table 1. There are 2000 images in face database, and
the mean age difference between test image and query
image is 15 years. We can see that the recognition rate
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increase significantly with age simulation.
Table.1 Face recognition rate with and without age
simulation
Top 1 Top 5 Top 10
Without age simulation 52.2% 65.5% 80.0%
With age simulation 63.3% 77.7% 91.1%
4.3 Conclusions
In this paper, an automatic method is proposed to
synthesize the face image at different ages. We first
locate position of the feature points using ASM, then a
triangle based affine transformation is applied to get
pure texture image, then shape and texture vectors are
obtained by PCA, after that aging function and aging
way classification are used to estimate the age of input
test image, then typical vector creating function is
applied to get vectors at target age to reconstruct the
shape and texture, finally we combine the synthesized
texture and shape to get the final synthesized image.
Experiments show that the proposed method can
simulate face image at different ages very well. And
the recognition rate is satisfied with age simulation.
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