AUTOMATIC REPRESENTATION OF ADULT AGING IN FACIAL
IMAGES
E. Patterson, K. Ricanek, M. Albert, and E. Boone
University of North Carolina Wilmington
601 S. College Rd., Wilmington, NC
U.S.A.
pattersone@uncw.edu, ricanekk@uncw.edu, albertm@uncw.edu, and boonee@uncw.edu
ABSTRACT
The natural process of aging affects human faces in a
variety of ways. These effects make many automated
processes, as well as human-driven processes, difficult.
The need to recognize faces after a gap of several years,
though, is likely to be the norm in many law-enforcement
and other face-recognition application environments,
making consideration of aging very important. To date,
though, scant research in modeling and face recognition
has even considered the effects of aging.
This work considers an active-appearance-model
approach to “facial aging” of images of adults. Some
similar work has been conducted concerning growth and
development but not adult aging, which is a distinct and
separate process. A sample from a new database,
containing some of the largest age spans of any publicly
available face database, is used along with active-
appearance models to artificially age images of adult
faces. A brief anthropological perspective of aging is
presented, the application and results of active-appearance
models to facial-image aging are given, and how these
results could affect face-recognition and forensic
applications is discussed.
KEYWORDS
Aging, face recognition, biometrics, and image synthesis.
1. Introduction
Many aspects affect the appearance of a person’s face
during the process of growing older. Although these
changes in appearance arise from a variety of contributing
factors that vary by elements such as lifestyle, race, and
geographical region, they are often collectively termed
“aging.” The associated changes may be subtle or large,
depending on the individual and time span covered, but
the changes can frustrate human and computer-based
recognition of individuals where some span of time has
passed between sample images. There has been little
study of this to date, but devising effective models for
including effects of aging in modeling and face
recognition applications could yield significant
improvements in a variety of areas. This paper discusses
work that progresses toward automatic generation of
accurate images of artificially "aged” individuals and also
progresses toward improved face-recognition algorithms
through the incorporation of face-aging models and
techniques.
1.1. Effects of Facial Aging
There are at least two areas that effective models of
face aging could directly aid: automated computer face
recognition and human use of hypothetically updated
images in law enforcement applications. Currently, face
recognition technology is heavily influenced by any
change in a test image versus training images; this change
could include aspects of pose, illumination, facial hair,
and certainly aging [1, 2]. In addition, most face
recognition databases in use only span a relatively short
time period between sample images and thus cannot be
used to study nor effectively demonstrate robustness of
techniques to age variation [3, 4]. The capability to
model accurate image and face model changes due to age
could be used to update a face-recognition training gallery
for improved recognition or even be incorporated directly
into the face recognition algorithm. Knowledge of what
changes occur and what features stay the same could also
be used to focus on recognition techniques that produce
age-invariant results.
In addition to improving face recognition software, the
capability to produce an accurately “aged” image of an
individual could aid several fields. Currently such images
are produced for forensic and other applications as well as
for study of history and anthropology but are not
produced through automated means or with particular
accuracy and rigor. The primary technique used to date is
creation of a drawing by a trained forensic sketch artist,
incorporating some scientific data in a largely artistic
approach to generating a facial image. Automated
computer methods for generating face images are
becoming more popular, and commercial software
packages have recently become available, but these are
primarily based on an artistic approach as well, rather
than including detailed, specific models of accurate aging
that could be applied to a variety of individuals [5, 6, 7].
The capability to produce images
that accurately represent the aging-related changes that
would have likely occurred to a particular individual since
the last known image, though, could aid the tracking and
apprehension of criminal suspects and terrorists, as well
as aid in searches for missing persons.
1.2. Anthropological Perspective
Effects of aging that would largely influence human or
computer recognition of an individual take place in the
craniofacial region, the bony portion of the head including
the braincase and face, as well as the overlying soft-tissue
which together produce the outer appearance of a person’s
face. The study of these changes is known as
morphology, and there is a large body of knowledge
related to these changes in anthropological literature that
could be applied to computer approaches to face modeling
and aging [6, 7, 8, 9]. (Craniofacial aging in this
discussion will refer to appearance-specific effects.)
Important considerations that could directly affect
computer models include causes of craniofacial aging,
factors that influence craniofacial aging, and changes that
are ultimately apparent in the adult face and head over
time. There are many variables such as environment,
behavior, idiosyncratic morphology, and hyper-dynamic
gestures that confound a generalized approach to aging.
Despite these variables, though, anthropological research
indicates that there are certain noticeable, agreed-upon,
and age-related skeletal and soft-tissue changes which
could allow for prediction of shape, size, and
configuration differences at general times during
adulthood. Further, known biological and environmental
factors that impact aging effects could be exploited to
assist general age-related predictions.
Major causes of craniofacial aging include small
skeletal changes and soft-tissue degenerative changes.
The skeletal changes include cranial expansion, anterior
face-height increase, and jaw shrinkage [8]. Soft tissue
appearance is affected by decreasing muscle tone or
atrophy, diminishing collagen and elastin, and skin
wrinkling and sagging. In addition to these basic, natural
changes, there are several important factors that influence
craniofacial aging. Of these, photoaging most affects the
appearance – largely impacting fair-skinned individuals
and individuals in climatically sunny regions [7]. Other
major factors include ancestry, sex, health and disease,
tobacco and drug use, diet, stress-related sleep
deprivation, biomechanical factors, gravity, and hyper-
dynamic facial expressions [7, 8].
Of significant importance is the fact that these changes
vary in their rate over the typical adult lifespan.
Generally, changes occur less rapidly in the 20s,
accelerate somewhat in the 30s, and accelerate even more
so in the 40s and 50s, which is perhaps the time span of
greatest change. Past the 50s, the changes which have
already begun increase, and other degenerative changes
may occur.
Changes to note that begin in the 20s and 30s include
horizontal creases in the forehead, slight drooping of the
eyelids, nasiolabial lines (“laugh lines”), lateral orbital
lines (“crow’s feet”), circumoral striae (lines around the
mouth), hollowing of the cheek at the inferior border of
the zygomatic arch, decrease in upper-lip size, and
retrusion of the upper lip (more so in females) [6, 8, 9].
The appearance of these changes continues to become
more noticeable, and by or around 50 years, other changes
have begun. Numerous fine lines appear. Skin is thinner
and tends to sag. It is also rougher, drier, and shows loss
of tone and elasticity. Wrinkles appear on the neck.
Discolorations in skin may begin to appear. Loss of hair
and de-pigmentation may occur. Hair may also grow in
areas that previously had little or no growth [8, 9].
Overall, other general trends occur. There are small
skeletal changes in height and width that can affect the
outer appearance of the soft tissue. Nose height and
length increases, and ear length increases. Mouth width
increases. In very aged people, faces may appear smaller
due to overall degeneration. These changes are not
linearly consistent, but tend to occur at greater rates past
the 40s. Some factors, such as the location of certain
anthropometric landmarks, remain unchanged. One such
measurement is that of inter-pupilary distance. These
general trends may also be affected by the confounding
trends mentioned earlier, particularly though, by weight-
gain or weight-loss. Weight-loss due to illness can tend
to exaggerate age-related change even more than typical
thinning due to diet and exercise changes [7, 8].
Consideration of these major changes and their
influences may be used to inform computer-based models
of aging. Important conclusions that may be drawn from
this information are that appearance-specific aging effects
are nonlinear in their rate of change over the adult
lifespan and that specific models that take into account
known individual factors of aging should be considered
for improved accuracy.
1.3. MORPH Database
The work presented in this paper takes advantage of a
new publicly available face database that was created with
the desire to study aging more specifically, also
considering individual-specific data that may directly
affect craniofacial aging. For these purposes, images
were collected with larger spans of time between samples
of individuals than in traditional face-recognition
databases to date, including longitudinal spans from
several months to over twenty years. In addition to the
images, meta-data was collected for individuals including
information such as weight, lifestyle factors, and
geographical location that may be used to study
individual-specific aging factors.
The MORPH database currently includes 1,724 face
images of 515 individuals. There are 1,278 images of
individuals of African-American descent, 433 images of
individuals of Caucasian descent, and 3 images classified
as other. There are 294 images of females and 1,430
images of males. The average age of an individual at the
time of acquisition is 27.3 years with a standard deviation
of 8.6 years and a maximum age of 68 years. Efforts are
still ongoing to increase the age, time-span, gender, and
ethnicity represented in the database.
1.4. Approaches to Aging
A variety of methods have been considered for face
modeling, parameterization, and recognition, but little
work has been conducted to yield accurate models of
aging or age-invariant recognition techniques. Some of
the methods attempted that have been published to date
include image compositing and geometric transformations
[10, 11, 12, 13, 14], but the most promising work to date
has likely been the use of active-appearance models [15,
16, 17] by Lanitis et al. [18]. Although this work is
directly applicable, it was performed on a progression of
images of individuals that represent growth and
development not adult aging. These are separate
processes [8], the first involving major changes in the
underlying skeletal features toward the formation of the
adult skull and face and the second involving the minor
skeletal changes and larger soft-tissue, muscle, and skin
degenerative conditions as mentioned in the previous
section. Accurate models of growth and development of
faces could likely aid searches for missing children, but
accurate models of craniofacial aging would be more
applicable for law enforcement and homeland security
applications. The changes and influencing factors are
significantly different for the two different processes, thus
separate models should perform better.
2. Automatic Aging of Images
This work considers the use of active appearance
models for simulating adult craniofacial aging in images
as well as for improving face recognition accuracy. There
are several advantages to active appearance models. One
is that they may be used to accurately model shape and
texture information independently of each other. Another
advantage is that such an approach may be extended in a
straight-forward fashion to the use of a 3D-morphable-
model for similar studies [21]. For this work, an early
sample from the MORPH database was considered.
2.1. Sample Test Set from MORPH
The sample set used in this work consists of five to six
images of nine individuals from the database, forty-eight
total images, representing individuals for whom there
were at least five different dates of image acquisition.
The ages of these individuals at the time that the
photographs were taken ranges from early 20s to the 40s.
A sample of images for one individual is included in
Figure 1. (Facial hair and hats did affect the texture
models to a small degree, but as more images are
incorporated into the active appearance model, their
effects become less noticeable.)
Figure 1: Sequential images from one individual.
2.2. Aging Using Active-Appearance Models
Generating an active-appearance model includes
devising a shape model [19] and a texture model
(independent of shape) based on principal components
analysis (PCA) of the given parameters for each model,
and then creating a combined active-appearance model by
performing PCA once more on the combined shape and
texture parameters.
The shape model parameters in this work are based on
a superset of common anthropometric points, including
sixty-five landmarks on the face as shown in Figure 2.
The texture of each image is warped from that image’s
landmarks to the shape model’s average face landmarks in
order to generate shape-independent texture information.
Samples of the pixel intensity are taken across the model
to generate the texture parameters which are
dimensionally reduced using PCA. For each image, shape
and texture parameter vectors are concatenated to yield a
joint parameter vector. PCA is performed again on these
vectors, yielding 30 final parameters in the case of this
work. These parameters represent each face as a specified
distance from the active-appearance model parameters of
the average face and may be used to classify faces or
synthesize new images of faces [15].
Figure 2: Landmarks used for active shape models.
2.3. Simulation of Aging in Images
Simulating aging of the faces in images was performed
using a two-step approach, similar to that described in
Lanitis et al. [17]. The first step is to estimate the age of
the face in a given image. The second step involves
shifting the active-appearance-model parameters in the
direction of a theoretical “aging” axis.
Estimating the age in the first step requires a solution to
the equation
 better compare it to older photos from a face recognition
ageest = W1b + W2b2 + offset, (1) gallery. This process is similar to that described above
except results in a parameter shift toward a “younger”
where b and b2 are the thirty active-appearance model face image.
parameters and the parameters squared for the given
image, W1 and W2 are a set of weights to be found to shift 2.5. Effects on Face Recognition
the model parameters, and offset is a constant to place age
values in an appropriate range. This equation was In addition to generating images of individuals at
different ages, a PCA-based face recognizer [22] was
represented as an optimization problem, and a genetic
constructed to test possible improvements that could be
algorithm was used to find an appropriate solution [20].
yielded from the aging/de-aging of images. There are two
After optimization, the aging function that was
main approaches that were considered versus the standard
determined was able to estimate the ages of faces in the
PCA-based recognizer. The first was automatic aging of
given images from the sample set with less than a 5%
all of the gallery images to the estimated age of an
error.
individual at the time of the test photo. The second was
The second step of simulating aging in the image may
de-aging each test photo by ten years to bring it closer to
be represented by the equation
the average of the gallery training photos for the
recognizer.
b2 = f(agenew, b1), (2)
Three tests were performed considering PCA-based
where b1 is the vector of parameters for a given facial face recognition. The first test considered a gallery of 4
images each for the same 9 individuals used in the active
image, agenew is the desired age to which to transform the
appearance aging models (36 images total). The 4 images
face, and b2 is the vector of parameters generated for the
selected for each individual were taken of that individual
new age. The approach taken thus far in this work is a
in the 20s to early 30s age span. Test images were of the
“generalized” aging model, based on a lookup table,
individual at an age closer to 40, though.
similar to that presented by Lanitis et al. [17]. There is no
direct solution for an “inverse aging” equation given an
image and a desired age, so ten thousand random but
plausible images were generated using active-appearance- Standard Gallery 11% accuracy
model parameters. These images were averaged for each and Test Images
given age and used to populate a lookup table with the Aged Gallery 11% accuracy
average face parameters for a given age. This table Images
represents the generalized aging model. Sample images De-Aged Test 33% accuracy
from this are shown in Figure 3. Images
To generate an image of an individual at a specified
Table 1: PCA-based face recognition results.
age, the original image is transformed in active-
appearance-model parameters. The age of the individual
The standard PCA recognizer did not perform well,
in the image is estimated using the method described
choosing the correct individual only 11% of the time.
above, and the difference of age parameters at the desired
Aging the whole gallery of images closer to that of the
age and estimated age is taken from the lookup table.
age of the individual at the time of the test photo did not
This difference is added to the original active appearance
seem to yield any improvement. De-aging the one test
model parameters to generate parameters for an image of
photo by ten years, though, yielded a notable
that individual at the requested age.
improvement in identifying the correct individual. The
sample size here is small, but it does illustrate some
2.4. De-aging Images
potential for improved face recognition of images where
Not only might “aged” images of an individual be craniofacial aging has occurred.
desired for face recognition and forensic applications, but
“de-aged” images might be desired as well. For instance, 3. Discussion of Approach
an image of an unknown individual could be “de-aged” to
This work considered a relatively small sample from

Figure 3: Sequential images from the generalized aging model “look-up table.”
the MORPH database, but early results indicate promise.
Plausible images were generated even with a relatively
small number of images in the training set, and some
improvement was demonstrated in the basic PCA-based
face recognizer tested in this work.
Two approaches were taken in generating images using
the generalized aging model derived in this work. Images
from each individual at younger ages were taken and aged
to a likeness closer to 40. Likewise, older images were
de-aged from around 40 to an early 20s likeness. Samples
are shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5.
Figure 4: 20s to “40” aged images.
Figure 5: Late 30s/Early 40s to “20” de-aged images.
Due to the small sample size, facial hair, and perhaps
some minor errors in labeling, artifacts and minor pose
variations are present in some of the images, but overall
they demonstrate appearance changes due to aging that
are plausible within the framework of the anthropological
research presented earlier in this paper. One of the most
notable trends was widening of the face, which is likely
due to typical addition of weight with age in the United
States. Areas around the eyes, brow, and mouth did
exhibit changes as expected and discussed in
anthropological literature, but a larger sample size and
more comprehensive model will be necessary to
demonstrate these effects in more specific detail.
4. Conclusion
A sample set of the MORPH database has been used to
develop and test methods for the automatic aging of faces
in images represented using active appearance models.
Both aging and “de-aging” methods were performed on
images yielding plausible results given a literature study
of anthropological research concerning human face aging.
Improvement of recognition accuracy in a basic PCA-
based face recognizer was also demonstrated when
current facial test images were “de-aged” to the ages of
the individuals from the recognizer’s gallery at the time
the original face images were taken.
These results are promising for modeling adult
craniofacial aging, but there are several areas to focus
further investigation. Two primary areas, perhaps, should
be consideration of a nonlinear approach to shifting model
parameters across ages and the consideration of
individual-specific influences on aging. Lanitis et al. [17]
considered some individual functions for growth and
development through the use of appearance-based and
data-based selection of similar “aging equations.” These
did seem to indicate performance improvements for
growth and development and might also for adult aging.
Such an approach with a more developed classification
scheme based on ethnicity, lifestyle, region, weight, etc.
should probably yield more accurate changes in generated
facial images.
Also adding capability to tailor specific effects of aging
to local regions of the face would likely prove more
accurate and effective. In addition to these possibilities,
incorporating a nonlinear shifting of age parameters that
more accurately models the larger changes through the
40s and 50s should yield better results as well, given
knowledge presented in anthropological literature
suggesting larger rates of change during this period in
adulthood. These and other methods for generating
images as well as incorporating aging models into face-
recognition research should prove useful in many
practical applications. This work is currently being
expanded to a larger portion of the MORPH database
taking these ideas into consideration.
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