REGION GROWING COLOUR IMAGE SEGMENTATION APPLIED TO FACE DETECTION

A colour segmentation method is described which is based on a seeded region growing (SRG) segmentation algorithm. First the 3-D histogram in the Lab colour coordinate system is extracted. The histogram bins are then grouped using a hierarchical clustering algorithm. The number of classes can be automatically determined, while a k-means algorithm is used for determining the nal list of dominant colours. The classication according to the dominant colours determines the initial seeds for a region growing segmentation algorithm. Segmentation is followed by a merging procedure which is based on colour and boundary information of regions. The proposed algorithm has been tested on facial images, for the needs of face detection.

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