Content-based storage and retrieval scheme for image and video databases

In this paper, a technique is presented to locate and track the facial areas in image and video databases. The extracted facial regions are used to obtain a number features that are suitable for content-based storage and retrieval. The proposed face localization method consists of essentially two components: i) a color processing unit, and ii) a shape and color analysis module. The color processing component utilizes the distribution of skin-tones in the HSV color space to obtain an initial set of candidate regions or objects. The latter shape and color analysis module is used to correctly identify the facial regions when falsely detected objects are extracted. A number of features such as hair color, skin-tone, and face location and size are subsequently determined from the extracted facial areas. The hair and skin colors provide useful descriptions related to the human characteristics while the face location and size can reveal information about the activity within the scene, and the type of image. These features can be effectively combined with others and employed in user queries to retrieve particular facial images.