Structure-aware Heatmap and Boundary Map Regression Based Robust Face Alignment

Large head pose variations and severe occlusion are challenging problems for face alignment. In this paper, we propose a Structure-aware Heatmap and Boundary map Regression Network (SHBRN), consisting of a rough estimation network and a refinement network, to accounting for the structural geometry...

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Main Authors: HUANG, L., WU, Y.
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava 2023-05-01
Series:Advances in Electrical and Computer Engineering
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.4316/AECE.2023.02001
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author HUANG, L.
WU, Y.
author_facet HUANG, L.
WU, Y.
author_sort HUANG, L.
collection DOAJ
description Large head pose variations and severe occlusion are challenging problems for face alignment. In this paper, we propose a Structure-aware Heatmap and Boundary map Regression Network (SHBRN), consisting of a rough estimation network and a refinement network, to accounting for the structural geometry of faces via the boundary map. Specifically, in the rough estimation network, a structure-aware module is designed to capture low-level features rich in structure information, and both heatmaps and boundary maps are predicted by the hourglass network. In this way, the network can not only estimate the initial location of keypoints, but also implicitly take the geometric structure into consideration. In the refinement network, the boundary maps and heatmaps are fused with the features extracted in the rough stage via attention mechanism. As a result, the network can combine the global information with local appearance for obtaining complete face representations, and also optimize the spatial relationship of different keypoints. Our proposed network is superior to the existing methods on 300W, COFW, and AFLW datasets, especially for those challenging situations, which proves the effectiveness and robustness of our model.
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spelling doaj.art-adf91919a5544f088038bff9b65511192023-06-05T20:19:26ZengStefan cel Mare University of SuceavaAdvances in Electrical and Computer Engineering1582-74451844-76002023-05-0123231010.4316/AECE.2023.02001Structure-aware Heatmap and Boundary Map Regression Based Robust Face AlignmentHUANG, L.WU, Y.Large head pose variations and severe occlusion are challenging problems for face alignment. In this paper, we propose a Structure-aware Heatmap and Boundary map Regression Network (SHBRN), consisting of a rough estimation network and a refinement network, to accounting for the structural geometry of faces via the boundary map. Specifically, in the rough estimation network, a structure-aware module is designed to capture low-level features rich in structure information, and both heatmaps and boundary maps are predicted by the hourglass network. In this way, the network can not only estimate the initial location of keypoints, but also implicitly take the geometric structure into consideration. In the refinement network, the boundary maps and heatmaps are fused with the features extracted in the rough stage via attention mechanism. As a result, the network can combine the global information with local appearance for obtaining complete face representations, and also optimize the spatial relationship of different keypoints. Our proposed network is superior to the existing methods on 300W, COFW, and AFLW datasets, especially for those challenging situations, which proves the effectiveness and robustness of our model.http://dx.doi.org/10.4316/AECE.2023.02001distance learningimage analysisneural networkpattern analysissupervised learning
spellingShingle HUANG, L.
WU, Y.
Structure-aware Heatmap and Boundary Map Regression Based Robust Face Alignment
Advances in Electrical and Computer Engineering
distance learning
image analysis
neural network
pattern analysis
supervised learning
title Structure-aware Heatmap and Boundary Map Regression Based Robust Face Alignment
title_full Structure-aware Heatmap and Boundary Map Regression Based Robust Face Alignment
title_fullStr Structure-aware Heatmap and Boundary Map Regression Based Robust Face Alignment
title_full_unstemmed Structure-aware Heatmap and Boundary Map Regression Based Robust Face Alignment
title_short Structure-aware Heatmap and Boundary Map Regression Based Robust Face Alignment
title_sort structure aware heatmap and boundary map regression based robust face alignment
topic distance learning
image analysis
neural network
pattern analysis
supervised learning
url http://dx.doi.org/10.4316/AECE.2023.02001
work_keys_str_mv AT huangl structureawareheatmapandboundarymapregressionbasedrobustfacealignment
AT wuy structureawareheatmapandboundarymapregressionbasedrobustfacealignment