Age Synthesis and Estimation via Faces: A Survey

• Published in: IEEE transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence Vol. 32; no. 11; pp. 1955 - 1976
• Main Authors: Yun Fu, Guodong Guo, Huang, T S
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Alamitos, CA IEEE 01.11.2010; IEEE Computer Society; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Age; age estimation; age progression; age synthesis; Aging; Aging - physiology; Algorithms; Anthropometry - methods; Application software; Applied sciences; Artificial Intelligence; Computer Graphics; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer Simulation; Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface; Computer vision; Customer relationship management; Electronics; Exact sciences and technology; Face - physiology; Face aging; Face detection; Forensics; Humans; Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted - methods; Information systems. Data bases; Intelligence; Machine vision; Mathematical models; Memory organisation. Data processing; Models, Biological; Pattern analysis; Pattern Recognition, Automated - methods; Pattern recognition. Digital image processing. Computational geometry; Regression Analysis; Software; survey; Synthesis; Biometrics; Performance evaluation; Entertainment; Image processing; Modeling; age synthesis; Image synthesis; Customer relationship management; Face aging; News; Facies; Computer graphics; Pattern analysis; Age; Monitoring; Novelty; Computer vision; Forensic science; Face recognition; age estimation; Ageing; Image databank; age progression; Surveillance; survey; Artificial intelligence
• ISSN: 0162-8828; 1939-3539; 1939-3539
• DOI: 10.1109/TPAMI.2010.36

Human age, as an important personal trait, can be directly inferred by distinct patterns emerging from the facial appearance. Derived from rapid advances in computer graphics and machine vision, computer-based age synthesis and estimation via faces have become particularly prevalent topics recently because of their explosively emerging real-world applications, such as forensic art, electronic customer relationship management, security control and surveillance monitoring, biometrics, entertainment, and cosmetology. Age synthesis is defined to rerender a face image aesthetically with natural aging and rejuvenating effects on the individual face. Age estimation is defined to label a face image automatically with the exact age (year) or the age group (year range) of the individual face. Because of their particularity and complexity, both problems are attractive yet challenging to computer-based application system designers. Large efforts from both academia and industry have been devoted in the last a few decades. In this paper, we survey the complete state-of-the-art techniques in the face image-based age synthesis and estimation topics. Existing models, popular algorithms, system performances, technical difficulties, popular face aging databases, evaluation protocols, and promising future directions are also provided with systematic discussions.