Automatic Face Detection

Face detection is a computer technology being used in a variety of applications that identifies human faces in digital images. Face detection also refers to the psychological process by which humans locate and attend to faces in a visual scene.

Face-detection algorithms focus on the detection of frontal human faces. It is analogous to image detection in which the image of a person is matched bit by bit. Image matches with the image stores in database. Any facial feature changes in the database will invalidate the matching process.

A reliable face-detection approach based on the genetic algorithm and the eigen-face technique:

Firstly, the possible human eye regions are detected by testing all the valley regions in the gray-level image. Then the genetic algorithm is used to generate all the possible face regions which include the eyebrows, the iris, the nostril and the mouth corners.

Each possible face candidate is normalized to reduce both the lightning effect, which is caused by uneven illumination; and the shirring effect, which is due to head movement. The fitness value of each candidate is measured based on its projection on the eigen-faces. After a number of iterations, all the face candidates with a high fitness value are selected for further verification. At this stage, the face symmetry is measured and the existence of the different facial features is verified for each face candidate.