Real-time face detection using edge-orientation matching

Abstract

In this paper we describe our ongoing work on real-time face detection in grey level images using edge orientation information. We will show that edge orientation is a powerful local image feature to model objects like faces for detection purposes. We will present a simple and efficient method for template matching and object modeling based solely on edge orientation information. We also show how to obtain an optimal face model in the edge orientation domain from a set of training images. Unlike many approaches that model the grey level appearance of the face our approach is computationally very fast. It takes less than 0.08 seconds on a Pentium II 500MHz for a 320x240 image to be processed using a multi-resolution search with six resolution levels. We demonstrate the capability of our detection method on an image database of 17000 images taken from more than 2900 different people. The variations in head size, lighting and background are considerable. The obtained detection rate is more than 93% on that database. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2001.