Multi-face detection based on downsampling and modified subtractive clustering for color images

This paper presents a multi-face detection method for color images. The method is based on the assumption that faces are well separated from the background by skin color detection. These faces can be located by the proposed method which modifies the subtractive clustering. The modified clustering algorithm proposes a new definition of distance for multi-face detection, and its key parameters can be predetermined adaptively by statistical information of face objects in the image. Downsampling is employed to reduce the computation of clustering and speed up the process of the proposed method. The effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated by three experiments.