Face detection based on skin color information in visual scenes by neural networks

A method to examine whether or not human faces are included in the images and to detect their position by using the technique of skin color region extraction is presented. In this technique, the skin color which is a main feature of faces is detected, a binary image composed of skin color parts and background one is constructed from an original image using a neural network which learns color information, and then the skin color parts of some sizes are regarded as face candidates. Thus search regions are limited within the skin color parts. Therefore, an improvement in the detection speed is achieved. These face candidates are examined using a neural network which learns the features of faces, and estimates whether or not the original image includes the faces. From results of computer simulations, a search rate of 83.3 % accuracy was achieved from 15 sheets, each having from 1 to 3 faces. The sizes and positions of faces were chosen as randomly as possible. There was no search of other objects other than faces.