Detection of Human Faces in Images using a Novel Neural Network Technique

This paper presents a user interactive system that manages, with minimum user interaction, to locate a set of characteristic feature points in the frontal view of a person's face. The proposed method is user adaptive and is implemented as a combination of a classification-based facial region extraction technique with a transition based facial feature extraction method. Thus, a feed-forward neural network is first trained to recognize image blocks belonging to the facial area. Then, the feature detection algorithm is initialized with a blink of the user's eyes, which localizes the exact contours of the eyes. Finally, we locate the remaining facial features (face contour, eyebrows, mouth and nose) by adaptively thresholding the facial area and utilizing a- priori knowledge about the geometrical structure of the face.