The Impact of Asymmetric Left and Asymmetric Right Face Images on Accurate Age Estimation

Aging affects left and right half face differently owing to numerous factors such as sleeping habits, exposure to sun light, and weaker face muscles of one side of face. In computer vision, age of a given face image is estimated using features that are correlated with age, such as moles, scars, and wrinkles. In this study we report the asymmetric aging of the left and right sides of face images and its impact on accurate age estimation. Left symmetric faces were perceived as younger while right symmetric faces were perceived as older when presented to the state-of-the-art age estimator. These findings show that facial aging is an asymmetric process which plays role in accurate facial age estimation. Experimental results on two large datasets verify the significance of using asymmetric right face image to estimate the age of a query face image more accurately compared to the corresponding original or left asymmetric face image.