# Coding Facial Expressions with Gabor Wavelets (IVC Special Issue)

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.05938 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.05938/

## Key facts

- Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 13 Sep 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- ["Excavating AI" Re-excavated: Debunking a Fallacious Account of the JAFFE Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.13998/) (2021)
- [ARBEx: Attentive Feature Extraction with Reliability Balancing for Robust Facial Expression Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.01486/) (2023)
- [CIAO! A Contrastive Adaptation Mechanism for Non-Universal Facial Expression Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.07221/) (2022)
- [GCF: Graph Convolutional Networks for Facial Expression Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.02361/) (2024)
- [Facial-R1: Aligning Reasoning and Recognition for Facial Emotion Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.10254/) (2025)
- [Neural Architecture Search Using Genetic Algorithm for Facial Expression Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12194/) (2023)
- [Evaluating Facial Expression Recognition Datasets for Deep Learning: A Benchmark Study with Novel Similarity Metrics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20428/) (2025)
- [Domain Adaptation for Facial Expression Classifier via Domain Discrimination and Gradient Reversal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01467/) (2021)
- [GReFEL: Geometry-Aware Reliable Facial Expression Learning under Bias and Imbalanced Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.15927/) (2024)
- [Auditing Facial Emotion Recognition Datasets for Posed Expressions and Racial Bias](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.10755/) (2025)
- [MotivNet: Evolving Meta-Sapiens into an Emotionally Intelligent Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.24231/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present a method for extracting information about facial expressions from digital images. The method codes facial expression images using a multi-orientation, multi-resolution set of Gabor filters that are topographically ordered and approximately aligned with the face. A similarity space derived from this code is compared with one derived from semantic ratings of the images by human observers. Interestingly the low-dimensional structure of the image-derived similarity space shares organizational features with the circumplex model of affect, suggesting a bridge between categorical and dimensional representations of facial expression. Our results also indicate that it would be possible to construct a facial expression classifier based on a topographically-linked multi-orientation, multi-resolution Gabor coding of the facial images at the input stage. The significant degree of psychological plausibility exhibited by the proposed code may also be useful in the design of human-computer interfaces.