通过曲率分析发现3D人脸重建中的年龄、性别和种族偏差。
Discovering Geometric Biases in 3D Face Reconstruction: A Curvature-Aware Spectral Framework for Fairness Evaluation

- 用拉普拉斯-贝尔特拉米算子生成高分辨率曲率误差图,捕捉表面细微差异。
- 用户研究验证新指标与人眼感知相关性显著高于传统方法。
- 揭示了3DMM在年龄、性别和族裔上的系统性偏差,适合关注公平性的研究者。
3D可变形模型(3DMM)是当前主流3D人脸重建算法的标准参数化形状先验。然而,由于这些模型基于有限的3D人脸样本训练,会继承训练数据的形态学偏差,可能限制其在多样化全球人群中的泛化能力。本文提出一种新颖框架,通过表面曲率视角分析3DMM重建结果,旨在发现、量化并可视化这些偏差。不同于依赖欧氏距离的传统评估指标,我们的重建误差能捕捉局部拓扑或起伏等细微表面特征。为此,我们利用拉普拉斯-贝尔特拉米算子(LBO)生成高分辨率曲率误差图,提供局部且几何意义明确的真值人脸与重建网格间的差异可视化。由此衍生的误差度量经用户研究验证,与人类感知的相关性显著高于传统方法。我们在多个3DMM基底和拟合算法上进行了广泛实验,发现了系统性的年龄相关偏差,并初步揭示了与性别和族裔相关的偏差。研究强调,未来3D人脸重建研究需采用曲率感知的评估协议,以保障人口公平性和几何精度。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
3D Morphable Models (3DMMs) remain the standard parametric shape priors for many state-of-the-art 3D face reconstruction algorithms. However, as these models are derived from a finite number of 3D face samples, they inherit the morphological biases of their training data, potentially limiting their generalizability across diverse global populations. In this paper, we propose a novel framework to analyze 3DMM reconstructions through the lens of surface curvature, with the objective to discover, quantify and visualize biases. While standard evaluation metrics often rely on Euclidean distances, our reconstruction error captures subtle surface nuances such as local topology or undulations. To do so, we leverage the Laplace-Beltrami Operator (LBO) to generate high-resolution curvature error maps, providing a localized and geometrically meaningful visualization of discrepancies between ground truth faces and reconstructed meshes. We derive from it an error metric that we validated through a user study, observing a significantly higher correlation to human perception compared to traditional methods. Furthermore, we conduct extensive experiments across several 3DMM bases and fitting algorithms, uncovering systematic age-related biases and providing preliminary evidence of biases associated with gender and ethnicity. Our findings highlight the necessity of adopting curvature-aware evaluation protocols to ensure demographic fairness and geometric precision in future 3D face reconstruction research.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。