Human face segmentation and tracking using connected operators and partition projection

A new technique for segmenting and tracking human faces in video sequences is presented. The algorithm uses a connected operator to extract the connected component that more likely belongs to a face. Such a connected operator is implemented by means of a binary partition tree. A set of connected regions (a node in the tree) is selected maximizing an estimation of the likelihood of being part of a face. Faces are tracked through the sequence based on the partition projection approach. A face and a non-face core component are obtained in the current image by projecting the previous partition. The technique has been successfully assessed using several test sequences from the MPEG-4 database (raw format) as well as from the MPEG-7 database (MPEG-1 format).