Extracting symbolic information from facial images

A method for automatically extracting symbolic-level information from single facial images is proposed. We combine a 2D Gabor wavelet labelled elastic graph representation with Fisher discriminant analysis. Use of this representation relaxes the requirement for exact normalization of the face. The algorithm is used to extract information about the sex, "race" and emotional expression of the face in the image. A visual interpretation of the discriminant vectors is provided.