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Using Bounded Diameter Minimum Spanning Trees to Build Dense Active Appearance Models

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Abstract

We present a method for producing dense active appearance models (AAMs), suitable for video-realistic synthesis. To this end we estimate a joint alignment of all training images using a set of pairwise registrations and ensure that these pairwise registrations are only calculated between similar images. This is achieved by defining a graph on the image set whose edge weights correspond to registration errors and computing a bounded diameter minimum spanning tree. Dense optical flow is used to compute pairwise registration and a flow refinement method to align small scale texture is introduced. Further, given the registration of training images, vertices are added to the AAM to minimise the error between the observed flow fields and the flow fields interpolated between the AAM mesh points. We demonstrate a significant improvement in model compactness.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Iain Waugh and Norbert Braunschweiler for allowing us to model their faces. We would also like to thank everyone in the Speech Technology Group at Toshiba Research Europe for their help with the visual text-to-speech component of this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 1PZ , UK

    Robert Anderson & Roberto Cipolla

  2. Toshiba Research Europe Ltd., Cambridge,  CB4 0GZ , UK

    Björn Stenger

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  1. Robert Anderson
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  2. Björn Stenger
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Correspondence to Robert Anderson.

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Anderson, R., Stenger, B. & Cipolla, R. Using Bounded Diameter Minimum Spanning Trees to Build Dense Active Appearance Models. Int J Comput Vis 110, 48–57 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11263-013-0661-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11263-013-0661-9

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