An Intelligent Facial Expression Recognition System Using a Hybrid Deep Convolutional Neural Network for Multimedia Applications

Abstract

Recognizing facial expressions plays a crucial role in various multimedia applications, such as human–computer interactions and the functioning of autonomous vehicles. This paper introduces a hybrid feature extraction network model to bolster the discriminative capacity of emotional features for multimedia applications. The proposed model comprises a convolutional neural network (CNN) and deep belief network (DBN) series. First, a spatial CNN network processed static facial images, followed by a temporal CNN network. The CNNs were fine-tuned based on facial expression recognition (FER) datasets. A deep belief network (DBN) model was then applied to integrate the segment-level spatial and temporal features. Deep fusion networks were jointly used to learn spatiotemporal features for discrimination purposes. Due to its generalization capabilities, we used a multi-class support vector machine classifier to classify the seven basic emotions in the proposed model. The proposed model exhibited 98.14% recognition performance for the JaFFE database, 95.29% for the KDEF database, and 98.86% for the RaFD database. It is shown that the proposed method is effective for all three databases, compared with the previous schemes for JAFFE, KDEF, and RaFD databases.