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The 2D2PCA Method in the DCT Domain

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 The 2D2 PCA Method in the DCT Domain

Noushath S.1,∗ , Abdelhamid Abdessalam2 , Ashok Rao3 ,

Mohammad Imran1 , Karan Jetly1 and Karthikeyan S.1
1 College of Applied Sciences, Sohar, Sultanate of Oman.
2 Department of Computer Science, Sultan Qaboos University, Sultanate of Oman.
3 Freelance Academician, Saraswathipuram, Mysore, India.

e-mail: 1 noushath.soh@cas.edu.om

Abstract. In this paper, a popular and robust subspace algorithm known as 2D2 PCA method
has been implemented in the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) domain. We implement the
2D2 PCA method by extracting the DCT coefficients of the training samples (instead of raw
pixel values). In this way, DCT method serves as a pre-processing step for our approach.
Extensive experiments have been conducted on ORL, and Yale databases and results are
considered for detailed analysis. We have also compared the performance of the proposed
method with other conventional PCA methods. The results suggest that the proposed method
outperforms conventional subspace algorithms in all test conditions.

Keywords: DCT, face recognition, PCA, subspace algorithm.

1. Introduction
Over the past four decades, face recognition has received tremendous attention by the researchers
for its wide range of application and technical challenges it poses. Pattern recognition and
signal processing based algorithms have become favorite choice by the research communities
for their robust solution. Face recognition system can be defined as an automatic system that
identifies a person based on comparing its facial features against a library of labeled/known
faces [2].
Despite long-term research on face recognition, the research communities have failed to provide
a solitary approach that performs robustly against all type of variations in the facial image such
as occlusion, noise, expression and lighting variations etc. Face recognition evaluation reports and
other competitions (such as FRVT, FRGC, FERET) report that even state-of-the-art methods’ perfor-
mance deteriorates if presented under unconstrained situations – either results are inconsistent or
fail completely.
∗ Corresponding author

K. R. Venugopal, K. B. Raja and L. M. Patnaik (Eds.) ICSIP 2013, pp. 235–240.

© Elsevier Publications 2013.
 Noushath S., et al.

It is clear from the review of existing techniques for face recognition that among many methods
proposed for face recognition, subspace based algorithms are more successful and it continues to
offer new solution ever since the PCA [1] was initially proposed in late 80’s/early 90’s. Numerous
algorithms have been proposed by implementing subspace algorithms in different domains (DCT,
Fourier, Wavelets etc), by changing its representation (vector/matrix based), by extracting non-linear
features (through kernel trick) etc. These extensions have proved to be effective and continue to add
new dimension to the solution.
As a sequel to our work in [2], we have implemented around 20 subspace algorithms in trans-
form domains (Wavelet, DCT and Fourier) and the results are being analyzed for their performance.
A part of this work has been reported in this paper for timely dissemination of the work. In this
paper, we have considered the popular 2D2 PCA method and implemented in the Discrete Cosine
Transform (DCT) domain. There are manifold reasons to carry out this study—prominent of them
are:
1. The data compacting ability of the two methods (2D)2 PCA and DCT and the promising results
reported by Dabbaghchian et al. [5] inspired us to conduct this investigation.
2. 2D2 PCA method is the most efficient and robust among the class of PCA based algorithms.
3. 2D2 PCA method uses too few features than any other PCA based matrix algorithm to represent
the face data.
4. DCT features are known to be robust and here too only low frequency DCT coefficients are
required to represent the data.
The aforementioned facts inspired us to investigate the performance of the 2D2 PCA method in
the DCT domain. Extensive experiments have been conducted on ORL and Yale face databases
and results are considered for detailed analysis. We have also compared the performance of the
proposed method with other conventional PCA-based methods. The results suggest that the proposed
method outperforms conventional subspace algorithms in all test conditions.
The paper is organized as follows: The proposed 2D2 PCA method in DCT domain is explained in
Section 2. Experimental results and analysis are reported in Section 4. Finally, concluding remarks
are drawn in Section 5.

2. Proposed Methodology
The proposed methodology helps to combine the benefit of DCT and 2D2 PCA in a single framework.
In this way, our method absorbs the robustness of both DCT and 2D2 PCA and exhibits improved
recognition rate for different variations in the facial image. In this section, we describe the imple-
mentation of 2D2 PCA method in the DCT domain.
In the conventional 2D2 PCA method, the covariance matrix is computed by considering the
intensity values of an n × n face image. Whereas in the DCT domain, we utilize low frequency DCT
components which are of block size w × w.
The main steps involved in the proposed algorithm is given as follows:
1. Let there be M training m × n face images Ak (k = 1, . . . , M).
2. To begin with, the 2D-DCT coefficients are extracted. Now, there are M new 2D-DCT
matrices ADCT
k (k = 1, . . . , M), Let BkDCT (k = 1, . . . , M) be a w × w matrix extracted

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The 2D2 PCA Method in the DCT Domain

from ADCT
k (k = 1, . . . , M) which contains low frequency component of the 2D-DCT.
The conventional 2DPCA covariance matrix (that works row-wize) is calculated using
BkDCT(k = 1, . . . , M) as follows:

1  DCT
M
DCT
G row = (Bk − B̄)T (BkDCT − B̄) (1)
M
k=1
M
where B̄ = M1 DCT
k=1 Bk is the mean of 2DDCT matrices.
3. The alternative 2DPCA covariance matrix (that works column-wise) is similarly calculated using
BkDCT as below:
1  DCT
M
G DCT
col = (Bk − B̄)(BkDCT − B̄)T (2)
M
k=1

Note and G row are of size w × w as against m × m or n × n as in conventional 2D2 PCA

G DCT
col
method.
4. Let X ∈ w×d be the projection matrix containing d eigen vectors of Eq. 1. Similarly Z ∈ w×q
be the projection matrix containing q dominant eigen vectors of Eq. 2.
5. The w × w feature matrix F is obtained by projecting BkDCT(k = 1, . . . , M) onto X and Z as
below:
F = Z q×w
T
· Bw×w
T
· X w×d (3)

3. Experimental Results
We have conducted several experiments to study the efficacy of the 2D2 PCA method in the DCT
domain. We considered two different databases for this study: ORL1 and Yale2 . All the programs are
implemented on an Intel Core i5-3.30 GHz processor with 4.00 GB RAM. In all our experiments,
we have used Euclidean similarity measure for classification purposes.

3.1 Experiments on ORL database

First, an experiment was performed to determine optimal block size of the DCT coefficient for better
recognition accuracy. We trained five sample of each class and tested the system with remaining five
samples. We repeated this experiment three times with a block size of 8 × 8, 16 × 16 and 32 × 32
and results are tabulated in Table 1. It is to be noted that we have tabulated only the best recognition
accuracy for varying number of projection vectors.
1 The ORL database contains 400 images corresponding to 40 different people with each per-
son having 10 different views. The variations include changes in expression, face details and slight
changes in pose. This database is used to evaluate the performance under the condition when both
sample size and pose are varied
2 The Yale face database contains 11 different images of 15 subjects in a variety of condi-

tions including with and without glasses, illumination variation and changes in facial expression.
We mainly use this database to test the performance of the system under varied facial expression and
lighting configurations.

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 Noushath S., et al.

Table 1. Optimal block size.

Block Size Accuracy

8×8 92.00
16 × 16 93.33
32 × 32 91.75

Table 2. Comparative study.

Running Time
Methods Accuracy Dimension (secs)
PCA 95.50 40 9.05
2D2 PCA [4] 97.00 8×8 4.14
2D2 PCA in 98.00 8×8 4.23
DCT Domain

The optimal recognition accuracy was achieved when the block size (w) was 16 × 16 and the
optimal number of projection vector ( p) was 8. Hence, all subsequent experiments in this database
had these values set.
Firstly, to compare the performance of 2D2 PCA method in spatial and DCT domain, we
conducted an experiment using first five image samples per class for training, and the remaining
images for testing. This way, the whole database has been split into two even parts containing
200 images. This experiment is repeated 25 times by varying projection vector number p (where
p = 1, 2, . . . , 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45). Since p has a considerable impact on the classification perfor-
mance, we chose the value that corresponds to best classification result on the image set. The results
are tabulated in Table 2.
Table 2 presents results obtained by proposed method and compares with other methods in terms
of best recognition accuracy, corresponding dimension of feature vector/matrices and running time
costs. It reveals that the best recognition accuracy of the 2D2 PCA method in DCT domain is slightly
better than its spatial domain counterpart. It is worth mentioning that the2D 2 PCA method in DCT
domain works on a block-size of w × w rather than the whole image (as in spatial domain), the final
dimension of this 2D2 PCA method becomes equal when the data coefficient in both domains get
projected onto X and Z , hence there is no significant storage benefit achieved when 2D2 PCA was
implemented in DCT domain. The tabulation also indicates that 2D2 PCA in DCT domain consumed
slightly more time than its spatial domain version. This is because, in DCT domain although we
work only on a smaller block size (w×w), we presume it is due to extraction of the DCT coefficients
from raw image data. Subsequently, it needs less time for remaining purposes (learning the system
and testing) because of a relatively small data matrix. This trade-off resulted in the DCT version
of 2D2 PCA method to consume slightly more time (or same in many other cases) than the spatial
domain version.
To make full use of the available data, we select first q views of every person from ORL to
construct the training data set, the remaining views of every person are used as test images. To ensure

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The 2D2 PCA Method in the DCT Domain

Table 3. Accuracy (%) for varying number of training samples.

Number of Training Samples

Methods 2 3 4 6 8
2D2 PCA [4] 86.50(8) 91.25(11) 93.75(13) 98.00(7) 99.50(9)
2D2 PCA in 88.50(6) 91.50(8) 94.25(10) 98.50(13) 99.50(8)
DCT Domain

Table 4. Results on Yale database for leave-one-out strategy.

Projection Ratio
Methods 6.66 10.00 13.33 16.66 20.00
PCA [1] 83.47 86.77 85.95 87.60 87.60
2DPCA [3] 88.42 88.42 86.77 88.42 86.77
Alternative 2DPCA [3] 88.42 85.12 85.12 85.12 84.29
2D2 PCA [4] 93.38 92.56 95.04 93.38 93.38
2D2 PCA in 92.56 93.38 96.93 94.77 93.38
DCT domain

sufficient training, a value of at least 2 is used for q. Table 3 shows the optimal recognition accuracy
achieved by varying number of training samples and number of projection vectors. The values in the
parenthesis denote the number of projection vectors ( p) used to attain best recognition accuracy.

3.2 Experiments on Yale database

To check the efficiency of the proposed method under varied lighting and facial expressions, we have
conducted another experiment on Yale database by using Leave-one-out strategy—leaving out one
image per person each time for testing and all of the remaining images are used for training. This
experiment is repeated 11 times by leaving out a different image of a person every time. We then
compute the average of 11 times result. Results are tabulated in Table 4.
Here all the eigenvectors are sorted in the descending order of their corresponding eigenvalues,
and selected eigenvectors are associated with the largest eigenvalues.
In contrast to PCA, 2DPCA and alternative-2DPCA methods, significant improvement in
accuracy is achieved (i.e. up to 13%) by 2D2 PCA method in DCT domain (conventional spatial
domain as well). Thus we can say that not only does the DCT version of 2D2 PCA prevails stable
under variation in pose angles( for ORL), but also exhibits efficiency and high robustness under the
condition when there is wide variations in both lighting configurations and facial expressions (for
Yale).

4. Conclusions
In this paper, we implemented the popular 2D2 PCA [4] subspace method in the DCT domain. It is
ascertained from our experiments that:

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 Noushath S., et al.

1. There is a hike in the recognition accuracy of the 2D2 PCA method (about 1 − 3%) when imple-
mented in the DCT domain as compared to its original spatial domain version.
2. The time taken by the DCT version is either the same or slightly higher than its spatial domain
counterparts due to the reason substantiated in section 3.1.
We have also compared the performance of the proposed method with other conventional PCA-
based methods. The results suggest that the proposed method outperforms conventional subspace
algorithms in all test conditions. As a sequel to this work, in future we would like to investigate the
performance of all subspace algorithms in various transform domains (such as Wavelets, DCT, and
Fourier) and study their performance under all test conditions. In a way, this would pave way for
delimiting the study of subspace algorithms in different domains.

Acknowledgments
The research leading to these results has received Research Project Grant Funding from the Research
Council of the Sultanate of Oman Research Grant Agreement No. [ORG MoHE ICT 10 023].

References
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(2010).
[3] Yang, J. and Zhang, D.: Two-Dimensional PCA: A New Approach to Appearance-based Face
Representation and Recognition. IEEE Transactions On Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 26,
131–137 (2004).
[4] Zhang, D. and Zhou, Z-H.: (2D)2 PCA: Two-Directional Two-Dimensional PCA for Efficient Face
Representation and Recognition, Neurocomputing, 69, 224–231, (2005).
[5] Dabbaghchian, S., Ghaemmaghami, M. P. and Aghagolzadeh, A.: Feature Extraction using Discrete Cosine
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