Multiscale Face Detection: A New Approach to Robust Face Detection

This paper presents a novel method for detecting multiple frontal faces in still images using multi-scale processing. The main characteristic of this algorithm is its stability in detecting faces with seldom false detections and a high correct detection rate. The novelty of this work comes from the utilization of multiscale detection and using two classifiers to reduce false detections. The algorithm generally has two stages: in the first stage, a face is detected in a unique scale and in the second stage, only the faces that are located in the neighbor scales are accepted as real faces. Consequently, a still image is first resized and scanned block wise, and then each enhanced block is tested for being face. One dimensional Harr wavelet is used for feature extraction, which gives appropriate discriminating features between the face and nonface classes. Detection results at each scale are accumulated in an internal database, so the ultimate detection is prepared based on the mutual detection information between consequent scales. To parameterize both the Bayesian and the simple proposed classifier, 2,643 faces were congregated from famous face databases and more than 10,000 non-face samples were selected from nature images. Experimental results using images gathered from known databases like MIT-CMU show great ability of the proposed algorithm in detecting faces.