Automatic facial expression recognition under partial occlusion based on motion reconstruction using a denoising autoencoder

Abstract

Automatic facial expression recognition (FER) plays a valuable role in various fields, including health, road safety, and marketing, where providing feedback on the user’s condition is crucial. While significant progress has been made in controlled environments (such as frontal, unconcluded, and well-lit conditions), recognizing facial expressions in unconstrained environments (natural settings) remains challenging. The presence of occlusions poses a particular difficulty as they obscure parts of the facial information captured in the image. To address this issue, researchers have proposed different solutions, broadly categorized into two approaches: those focusing on visible regions of the face and those attempting to reconstruct hidden parts. Currently, most solutions rely on texture or geometry-based methods, with only a few utilizing motion-based approaches. However, incorporating motion appears to be particularly promising in adapting to occlusions due to its unique characteristics, such as close-range propagation and local coherence. In this paper, our focus lies on leveraging motion to overcome the challenges posed by occlusions in FER tasks.