The Role Of Structural Information In Face Recognition

Human face is a special image, and the research of face recognition is an effective way to explore the mechanism of human cognition. The research of the process of face recognition has always been the hotspot of cognition research. Now there are heated debates upon face recognition between the feature theory, the template theory, the configuration theory and the holistic theory, and all of them have corresponding experimental supports. The reason of the debates is that the theories were based on different hypothesis.In this paper, it is hypothesized that both the feature information and the structural information are important to face recognition, and face is a holistic image of features jointed by structure. Based on this hypothesis, we explore the process of face recognition from edge-based face (line face) to real face (photographic face), with a investigation named "The evaluation of the similarity of line face" and three experiments of concrete face. The conclusions are as follows:1) Features, structure and the whole consist of them all have some contribution to face recognition. Of the three, structure plays a key role.2) Face is a visual object that consists of features integrated by structure.3) The role of structural information in the edge-based face is the same important with the real face in cognition process.4) In this paper, the structural information is further divided into inner structural information and outer structural information. The inner structural information refers to the relationship of eyes, nose and mouse. The outer structural information refers to the relationship between the contour and the whole of eyes, nose and mouse. It is found that the inner structural information plays a more important role in face recognition than the outer structural information.5) Human has a strong tendency to recognize object wholly.