Frontal-view face detection and facial feature extraction using color and morphological operations

A novel algorithm for front-view facial contour detection and features extraction is described. A skin-color face segmentation method is developed to detect the face region firstly. In order to more precisely locate the face contour and features such as eyes, mouth and nostrils, we eliminate the ears and neck from the face region by using morphological operations and knowledge about the face structure. We have found some consistent rules that can be used to locate some contour points from the skeleton of the processed frontal face region. The face contour can then be fitted as an ellipse using these points. Then the facial features can be located in the interior of the face contour. Experiments have been done with a number of images of frontal view of the head including some with a slight pan obtained from an Internet face database (University of Stirling). Also a number of face images captured by a color CCD camera are tried by our method. The robustness is confirmed with correct detection rate of over 90%. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.