Face detection evaluation: a new approach based on the golden ratio $${\Phi}$$

Abstract

Face detection is a fundamental research area in computer vision field. Most of the face-related applications such as face recognition and face tracking assume that the face region is perfectly detected. To adopt a certain face detection algorithm in these applications, evaluation of its performance is needed. Unfortunately, it is difficult to evaluate the performance of face detection algorithms due to the lack of universal criteria in the literature. In this paper, we propose a new evaluation measure for face detection algorithms by exploiting a biological property called Golden Ratio of the perfect human face. The new evaluation measure is more realistic and accurate compared to the existing one. Using the proposed measure, five haar-cascade classifiers provided by Intel©OpenCV have been quantitatively evaluated on three common databases to show their robustness and weakness as these classifiers have never been compared among each other on same databases under a specific evaluation measure. A thoughtful comparison between the best haar-classifier and two other face detection algorithms is presented. Moreover, we introduce a new challenging dataset, where the subjects wear the headscarf. The new dataset is used as a testbed for evaluating the current state of face detection algorithms under the headscarf occlusion.