Locating head and face boundaries for head-shoulder images

This paper presents a model-based approach to locate head and face boundaries in a head-shoulder image with plain background. Three models are constructed for the images, where the head boundary is divided into left/right subboundaries and the face boundary is divided into left/right and top/bottom sub-boundaries. The left/right head boundaries are located from two thresholded images and the final result is the combination of them. After the head boundary is located, the four face sub-boundaries are located from the grey edge image. The algorithm is carried out iteratively by detecting low-level edges and then organizing/verifying them using high-level knowledge of the general shape of a head. The experimental results using a database of 300 images show that this approach is promising. © 1999 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.