<title>Novel algorithm for automatic detection of faces and facial features in color images</title>

Abstract

In this paper, we presented an algorithm that implements the automatic detection of faces and facial features in color images. First, we use the chroma chart technique to determine the skin regions, then separate the touching regions apart using morphological operators; Second, we extract the candidate facial feature regions using morphological valley operators, for each skin region; Third, we match the candidate facial features with the model face we proposed to determine the optimal facial feature combination of eyes and mouth, thus we get the final description of the faces' geometric information. In this work, we improved the performance of the chroma chart, introduced morphological operators into the skin region analysis and facial feature detection, put forward our matching scheme that's fast and stable. The whole process is completely automatic, and is robust to lighting conditions, shading, tilt, multiple faces, etc.