Skin Region Detection Using a Mean Shift Algorithm Based on the Histogram Approximation

In conventional, skin detection methods using for skin color definitions is based on prior knowledge. By experimentation, the threshold value for dividing the background from the skin region is determined subjectively. A drawback of such techniques is that their performance is dependent on a threshold value which is estimated from repeated experiments. To overcome this, the present paper introduces a skin region detection method. This method uses a histogram approximation based on the mean shift algorithm. This proposed method applies the mean shift procedure to a histogram of a skin map of the input image. It is generated by comparing with the standard skin colors in the CbCr color space. It divides the background from the skin region by selecting the maximum value according to the brightness level. As the histogram has the form of a discontinuous function. It is accumulated according to the brightness values of the pixels. It is then, approximated by a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) using the Bezier curve technique. Thus, the proposed method detects the skin region using the mean shift procedure to determine a maximum value. Rather than using a manually selected threshold value, as in existing techniques this becomes the dividing point. Experiments confirm that the new procedure effectively detects the skin region.