Virtual gaze redirection in face images

Abstract

In video-conferencing, the participant watches the screen rather than the camera. This turns the gaze direction away from the other party and makes eye contact impossible. Artificial gaze redirection by iris repositioning has been proposed, but the feasibility of crucial algorithmic components, especially the challenging computer vision parts, was not demonstrated. This paper demonstrates a system for gaze redirection in color face images via eye synthesis and replacement. The proposed method can serve as an image editing tool for entertainment and commercial use, and is an important step towards gaze-redirection in video-conferencing.