Modeling age progression in young faces

We propose a craniofacial growth model that characterizes growth related shape variations observed in human faces during formative years. The model draws inspiration from the 'revised' cardioidal strain transformation model proposed in psychophysical studies related to craniofacial growth. The model takes into account anthropometric evidences collected on facial growth and hence is in accordance with the observed growth patterns in human faces across years. We characterize facial growth by means of growth parameters defined over facial landmarks often used in anthropometric studies. We illustrate how the age-based anthropometric constraints on facial proportions translate into linear and non-linear constraints on facial growth parameters and propose methods to compute the optimal growth parameters. The proposed craniofacial growth model can be used to predict one's appearance across years and to perform face recognition across age progression. This is demonstrated on a database of age separated face images of individuals under 18 years of age.