Facial recognition using fractal features

A system comprising:

• one or more computers and one or more storage devices storing instructions that are operable, when executed by the one or more computers, to cause the one or more computers to perform operations comprising:
• accessing data encoding a facial image that includes a face;
• generating a hierarchical graphical model of the face, the hierarchical graphical model including a node from a level that approximates the face within a contour;
• applying, to the node, a bank of filters that each correspond to a respective scale and a respective direction;
• determining a similarity measure that consolidates filter responses from the bank of filters by analyzing the filter responses from the bank of filters;
• based on the similarity measure, generating, for the node, a vector representation that represents the facial image at the node;
• and
• storing the vector representation.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing software comprising instructions executable by one or more computers which, upon such execution, cause the one or more computers to perform operations comprising:

• accessing data encoding a facial image that includes a face;
• generating a hierarchical graphical model of the face, the hierarchical graphical model including a node from a level that approximates the face within a contour;
• applying, to the node, a bank of filters that each correspond to a respective scale and a respective direction;
• determining a similarity measure that consolidates filter responses from the bank of filters by analyzing the filter responses from the bank of filters;
• based on the similarity measure, generating, for the node, a vector representation that represents the facial image at the node;
• and
• storing the vector representation.