Children's photos can be easily aged
Researchers at the University of Washington have developed software that automatically creates a sequence of images that reflect the change in a child's face as he grows up – right up to old age. This program is the first fully automated approach to modeling changes in a child's face, working with various lighting options, facial expressions and poses.
Based on a photo of a 3-year-old boy, the program automatically creates images of his face at different ages,
preserving his individuality (and even the milk that has not dried on his cheeks).
The shape and appearance of a child's face, as well as its expression, often change greatly as they grow up, which makes it extremely difficult to modulate and predict these changes. The program developed by the authors compares images of thousands of people divided into groups by age and gender, then calculates visual differences between groups that appear as they grow older and applies the identified patterns to the processed image.
To test the effectiveness of their program, the researchers collected photographs of 82 people taken at different stages of their lives and added images obtained using computer modeling to them. People who did not take part in the study were asked to choose real photos for each of the 82 cases. As a result, participants chose automatically modeled images as often as real photos.
The photo of the child (far left) was processed using an "aging" program (on the left in each of the pairs)
and compared with real photos of the same child taken at the appropriate age (on the right).
Photos of children taken not in studio conditions, but in real life conditions, are difficult to adequately "age" due to variations in lighting, shadows, grimaces and even leftover food on the face. To compensate for these effects, the algorithm created by the authors first automatically corrects the lighting, as well as the tilt and turn of the head. Only after that there is a change in the shape and appearance of the face.
Perhaps the most popular new application will be in the search for missing children. Until now, the grown-up faces of children who have been searching for a long time were created by artists who compared photos of the children themselves and their relatives. Another option was to use software that makes typical changes to the images that occur with a child's face, such as stretching the oval of the face, the appearance of wrinkles and an enlarged nose. In addition to the duration of the artistic process, both approaches do not allow obtaining sufficiently truthful images for the faces of children under the age of five.
The left image is the original photo, and the right one is gradually transformed until the age of 80.
The software that ages children's photos works on a regular computer and gives the result within about 30 seconds. To further improve its functioning, the developers plan to "teach" it to take into account not only the gender and age of the child in the original photo, but also his ethnic origin, as well as cosmetic factors, such as the appearance of wrinkles and the possibility of changing hair color.
Other examples of "aging" of children's photos can be found here.
The researchers will present the program and description of the new technology in the form of an Illumination-Aware Age Progression article at the IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference, which will be held on June 23-28 in Columbus, Ohio.
Evgeniya Ryabtseva
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on the materials of the University of Washington:
Automated age-progression software lets you see how a child will age.
11.04.2014