Robust face tracking using colour Dempster-Shafer fusion and particle filter

This paper describes a real time face detection and tracking system. The method consists in modelling the skin face by a pixel fusion process of three colour sources within the framework of the Demster-Shafer theory. The algorithm is composed of two phases. In a simple and fast initialising stage, the user selects successively in an image, a shadowy, an overexposed and a zone of mean intensity of the face. Then the fusion process models the face skin colour. Next, on the video sequence, a tracking phase uses the key idea that the face exterior edges are well approximated as an ellipse including the skin colour blob resulting from the fusion process. As ellipse detection gets easily disturbed in cluttered environnements by edges caused by non face objects, a simple and fast efficient least squares method for ellipse fitting is used. The ellipse parameters are taken into account by a stochastic algorithm using a particle filter in order to realise a robust face tracking in position, size and pose. The originality of the method consists in modelling the face skin by a pixel fusion process of three independant cognitive colour sources. Moreover, mass sets are determined from a priori models taking into account contextual variables specific to the face under study. Hence, the face specificity which is to present shadowy (neck) and overexposed zones (nose, front) is considered, so that sensitivity to lighting conditions decreases. Results of face skin modelling, fusion, ellipse fitting and tracking are illustrated and discussed in this paper. The limits of the method and future work are also commented in conclusion.