Face detection in colour images

This paper describes the development and quantitative assessment of an approach to face detection (FD), with the application of image classification in mind. The approach entitled 'crude automatic face extraction' (CAFE), is based on skin colour segmentation, multiple image representations and multi-resolution scanning. It is a direct extension of an approach by Huang (1994). Assessment is in terms of false acceptance (FA) and false rejection (FR) scores using a large quantity of unconstrained typical Internet images, some of which contain faces and some of which do not. Skin-based colour segmentation is introduced as a front-end, along with several additional low-level image representations, the benefits of which can be seen by a reduction in the FA score from 74% to 17%. It is also noted that a skin probability map can improve FD significantly.