Face sketch recognition

Abstract—Automatic retrieval of face images from police mug-shot databases is critically important for law enforcement agencies. It can effectively help investigators to locate or narrow down potential suspects. However, in many cases, the photo image of a suspect is not available and the best substitute is often a sketch drawing based on the recollection of an eyewitness. In this paper, we present a novel photo retrieval system using face sketches. By transforming a photo image into a sketch, we reduce the difference between photo and sketch significantly, thus allowing effective matching between the two. Experiments over a data set containing 188 people clearly demonstrate the efficacy of the algorithm. Index Terms—Eigenface, face recognition, face sketch synthesis, sketch recognition. I