All face recognition models in OpenCV are derived from the abstract base class FaceRecognizer, which provides a unified access to all face recongition algorithms in OpenCV.
class FaceRecognizer : public Algorithm
{
public:
//! virtual destructor
virtual ~FaceRecognizer() {}
// Trains a FaceRecognizer.
virtual void train(InputArray src, InputArray labels) = 0;
// Updates a FaceRecognizer.
virtual void update(InputArrayOfArrays src, InputArray labels);
// Gets a prediction from a FaceRecognizer.
virtual int predict(InputArray src) const = 0;
// Predicts the label and confidence for a given sample.
virtual void predict(InputArray src, int &label, double &confidence) const = 0;
// Serializes this object to a given filename.
virtual void save(const string& filename) const;
// Deserializes this object from a given filename.
virtual void load(const string& filename);
// Serializes this object to a given cv::FileStorage.
virtual void save(FileStorage& fs) const = 0;
// Deserializes this object from a given cv::FileStorage.
virtual void load(const FileStorage& fs) = 0;
// Sets additional information as pairs label - info.
void setLabelsInfo(const std::map<int, string>& labelsInfo);
// Gets string information by label
string getLabelInfo(const int &label);
// Gets labels by string
vector<int> getLabelsByString(const string& str);
};
I’ll go a bit more into detail explaining FaceRecognizer, because it doesn’t look like a powerful interface at first sight. But: Every FaceRecognizer is an Algorithm, so you can easily get/set all model internals (if allowed by the implementation). Algorithm is a relatively new OpenCV concept, which is available since the 2.4 release. I suggest you take a look at its description.
Algorithm provides the following features for all derived classes:
Moreover every FaceRecognizer supports the:
Note
When using the FaceRecognizer interface in combination with Python, please stick to Python 2. Some underlying scripts like create_csv will not work in other versions, like Python 3.
Sometimes you run into the situation, when you want to apply a threshold on the prediction. A common scenario in face recognition is to tell, whether a face belongs to the training dataset or if it is unknown. You might wonder, why there’s no public API in FaceRecognizer to set the threshold for the prediction, but rest assured: It’s supported. It just means there’s no generic way in an abstract class to provide an interface for setting/getting the thresholds of every possible FaceRecognizer algorithm. The appropriate place to set the thresholds is in the constructor of the specific FaceRecognizer and since every FaceRecognizer is a Algorithm (see above), you can get/set the thresholds at runtime!
Here is an example of setting a threshold for the Eigenfaces method, when creating the model:
// Let's say we want to keep 10 Eigenfaces and have a threshold value of 10.0
int num_components = 10;
double threshold = 10.0;
// Then if you want to have a cv::FaceRecognizer with a confidence threshold,
// create the concrete implementation with the appropiate parameters:
Ptr<FaceRecognizer> model = createEigenFaceRecognizer(num_components, threshold);
Sometimes it’s impossible to train the model, just to experiment with threshold values. Thanks to Algorithm it’s possible to set internal model thresholds during runtime. Let’s see how we would set/get the prediction for the Eigenface model, we’ve created above:
// The following line reads the threshold from the Eigenfaces model:
double current_threshold = model->getDouble("threshold");
// And this line sets the threshold to 0.0:
model->set("threshold", 0.0);
If you’ve set the threshold to 0.0 as we did above, then:
//
Mat img = imread("person1/3.jpg", CV_LOAD_IMAGE_GRAYSCALE);
// Get a prediction from the model. Note: We've set a threshold of 0.0 above,
// since the distance is almost always larger than 0.0, you'll get -1 as
// label, which indicates, this face is unknown
int predicted_label = model->predict(img);
// ...
is going to yield -1 as predicted label, which states this face is unknown.
Since every FaceRecognizer is a Algorithm, you can use Algorithm::name() to get the name of a FaceRecognizer:
// Create a FaceRecognizer:
Ptr<FaceRecognizer> model = createEigenFaceRecognizer();
// And here's how to get its name:
std::string name = model->name();
Trains a FaceRecognizer with given data and associated labels.
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The following source code snippet shows you how to learn a Fisherfaces model on a given set of images. The images are read with imread() and pushed into a std::vector<Mat>. The labels of each image are stored within a std::vector<int> (you could also use a Mat of type CV_32SC1). Think of the label as the subject (the person) this image belongs to, so same subjects (persons) should have the same label. For the available FaceRecognizer you don’t have to pay any attention to the order of the labels, just make sure same persons have the same label:
// holds images and labels
vector<Mat> images;
vector<int> labels;
// images for first person
images.push_back(imread("person0/0.jpg", CV_LOAD_IMAGE_GRAYSCALE)); labels.push_back(0);
images.push_back(imread("person0/1.jpg", CV_LOAD_IMAGE_GRAYSCALE)); labels.push_back(0);
images.push_back(imread("person0/2.jpg", CV_LOAD_IMAGE_GRAYSCALE)); labels.push_back(0);
// images for second person
images.push_back(imread("person1/0.jpg", CV_LOAD_IMAGE_GRAYSCALE)); labels.push_back(1);
images.push_back(imread("person1/1.jpg", CV_LOAD_IMAGE_GRAYSCALE)); labels.push_back(1);
images.push_back(imread("person1/2.jpg", CV_LOAD_IMAGE_GRAYSCALE)); labels.push_back(1);
Now that you have read some images, we can create a new FaceRecognizer. In this example I’ll create a Fisherfaces model and decide to keep all of the possible Fisherfaces:
// Create a new Fisherfaces model and retain all available Fisherfaces,
// this is the most common usage of this specific FaceRecognizer:
//
Ptr<FaceRecognizer> model = createFisherFaceRecognizer();
And finally train it on the given dataset (the face images and labels):
// This is the common interface to train all of the available cv::FaceRecognizer
// implementations:
//
model->train(images, labels);
Updates a FaceRecognizer with given data and associated labels.
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This method updates a (probably trained) FaceRecognizer, but only if the algorithm supports it. The Local Binary Patterns Histograms (LBPH) recognizer (see createLBPHFaceRecognizer()) can be updated. For the Eigenfaces and Fisherfaces method, this is algorithmically not possible and you have to re-estimate the model with FaceRecognizer::train(). In any case, a call to train empties the existing model and learns a new model, while update does not delete any model data.
// Create a new LBPH model (it can be updated) and use the default parameters,
// this is the most common usage of this specific FaceRecognizer:
//
Ptr<FaceRecognizer> model = createLBPHFaceRecognizer();
// This is the common interface to train all of the available cv::FaceRecognizer
// implementations:
//
model->train(images, labels);
// Some containers to hold new image:
vector<Mat> newImages;
vector<int> newLabels;
// You should add some images to the containers:
//
// ...
//
// Now updating the model is as easy as calling:
model->update(newImages,newLabels);
// This will preserve the old model data and extend the existing model
// with the new features extracted from newImages!
Calling update on an Eigenfaces model (see createEigenFaceRecognizer()), which doesn’t support updating, will throw an error similar to:
OpenCV Error: The function/feature is not implemented (This FaceRecognizer (FaceRecognizer.Eigenfaces) does not support updating, you have to use FaceRecognizer::train to update it.) in update, file /home/philipp/git/opencv/modules/contrib/src/facerec.cpp, line 305
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'cv::Exception'
Please note: The FaceRecognizer does not store your training images, because this would be very memory intense and it’s not the responsibility of te FaceRecognizer to do so. The caller is responsible for maintaining the dataset, he want to work with.
Predicts a label and associated confidence (e.g. distance) for a given input image.
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The suffix const means that prediction does not affect the internal model state, so the method can be safely called from within different threads.
The following example shows how to get a prediction from a trained model:
using namespace cv;
// Do your initialization here (create the cv::FaceRecognizer model) ...
// ...
// Read in a sample image:
Mat img = imread("person1/3.jpg", CV_LOAD_IMAGE_GRAYSCALE);
// And get a prediction from the cv::FaceRecognizer:
int predicted = model->predict(img);
Or to get a prediction and the associated confidence (e.g. distance):
using namespace cv;
// Do your initialization here (create the cv::FaceRecognizer model) ...
// ...
Mat img = imread("person1/3.jpg", CV_LOAD_IMAGE_GRAYSCALE);
// Some variables for the predicted label and associated confidence (e.g. distance):
int predicted_label = -1;
double predicted_confidence = 0.0;
// Get the prediction and associated confidence from the model
model->predict(img, predicted_label, predicted_confidence);
Saves a FaceRecognizer and its model state.
Saves this model to a given filename, either as XML or YAML.
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Saves this model to a given FileStorage.
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Every FaceRecognizer overwrites FaceRecognizer::save(FileStorage& fs) to save the internal model state. FaceRecognizer::save(const string& filename) saves the state of a model to the given filename.
The suffix const means that prediction does not affect the internal model state, so the method can be safely called from within different threads.
Loads a FaceRecognizer and its model state.
Loads a persisted model and state from a given XML or YAML file . Every FaceRecognizer has to overwrite FaceRecognizer::load(FileStorage& fs) to enable loading the model state. FaceRecognizer::load(FileStorage& fs) in turn gets called by FaceRecognizer::load(const string& filename), to ease saving a model.
Sets string information about labels into the model. .. ocv:function:: void FaceRecognizer::setLabelsInfo(const std::map<int, string>& labelsInfo)
Information about the label loads as a pair “label id - string info”.
Gets string information by label. .. ocv:function:: string FaceRecognizer::getLabelInfo(const int &label)
If an unknown label id is provided or there is no label information assosiated with the specified label id the method returns an empty string.
Gets vector of labels by string.
The function searches for the labels containing the specified substring in the associated string info.
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