Human Face Detection in Color Images

Detection of human face has many realistic and important applications such as human and computer interface, face recognition, face image database management, security access control systems and content-based indexing video retrieval systems. In this report a face detection scheme will be presented. The scheme is designed to operate on color images. In the first stage of algorithm, the skin color regions are detected based on the chrominance information. A color segmentation stage is then employed to make skin color regions to be divided into smaller regions which have homogenous color. Then, we use the iterative luminance segmentation to further separate the detected skin region from other skin-colored objects such as hair, clothes, and wood, based on the high variance of the luminance component in the neighborhood of edges of objects. Post-processing is applied to determine whether skin color regions fit the face constrains on density of skin, size, shape and symmetry and contain the facial features such as eyes and mouths. Experimental results show that the algorithm is robust and is capable of detecting multiple faces in the presence of a complex background which contains the color similar to the skin tone.