Abstract

A first step towards face recognition is the localization of face-like regions and the extraction of facial features as eyes, mouth and nose. Although a lot of work has already been done in this research area, the recognition of human faces out of a scene with cluttered background is still a problem that deserves further investigation. In this framework we present a novel approach to face localization by using color and shape information. For the extraction of facial features we employ two approaches. One is based on a modified watershed method and the second on min-max analysis. Results are shown for two different scenes. Index Terms: Face recognition, color image processing, watersheds, min-max analysis. 1 Introduction There are many different applications for face localization and recognition systems, e.g. modelbased video coding, security systems, mug shot matching. Due to variations in illumination, background, visual angle and facial expressions, the problem is complex. A critic...