The BioID Face Database
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Downloads
- BioID face database
- BioID eye-position files (also part of the face database)
- FGnet Markup Scheme of the BioID face database
If the server at FAU Erlangen is not available you can also download the facedb files from here:
Description of the face database
Image file format
The images are stored in single files using the portable gray map (pgm) data format. A pgm file contains a data header followed by the image data. In our case the header consists of four lines of text. In detail:
- the first line describes the format of the image data (ASCII/binary). In our files the text “P5” indicates that the data is written in binary form
- the second line contains the image width written in text form
- the third line keeps the image height also in text form
- the fourth line contains the maximum allowed gray value (255 in our images)
The header is followed by a data block containing the image data. The data is stored line per line from top to bottom using one byte per pixel.
Eye position file format
The eye position files are text files containing a single comment line followed by the x and the y coordinate of the left eye and the x and the y coordinate of the right eye separated by spaces. Note that we refer to the left eye as the person’s left eye. Therefore, when captured by a camera, the position of the left eye is on the image’s right and vice versa.
Evaluation of face detection algorithms
- Estimate the eye positions with your algorithm and calculate the absolute pixel distance from the manually set positions so that you receive two distance values.
- Choose the larger value and divide by the absolute pixel distance of the two manually set eye positions so that you become independent from the face’s size in the image. We call this value relative eye distance.
- When calculating this distance for each image you can choose the distribution function of the relative distances to compare some results with others.
In J. Bigun and F. Smeraldi, editors, Audio and Video based Person Authentication –
AVBPA 2001, pages 90-95. Springer, 2001
FGnet markup scheme of the face database
There are 20 manually placed points on each of your 1521 images.
The markup scheme is as follows:
0 = right eye pupil
1 = left eye pupil
2 = right mouth corner
3 = left mouth corner
4 = outer end of right eye brow
5 = inner end of right eye brow
6 = inner end of left eye brow
7 = outer end of left eye brow
8 = right temple
9 = outer corner of right eye
10 = inner corner of right eye
11 = inner corner of left eye
12 = outer corner of left eye
13 = left temple
14 = tip of nose
15 = right nostril
16 = left nostril
17 = centre point on outer edge of upper lip
18 = centre point on outer edge of lower lip
19 = tip of chin