Processing of facial information by computer

Abstract

Faces are very familiar to everyone and convey various information, including information that is specific to the individual and information that is part of mutual communication. Usually verbal media is not able to describe such information appropriately. Recently, detailed studies on facial information processing by computer have been carried out in the engineering field for application to communication media and human interfaces. Two main topics are recognition of human faces and synthesis of facial images. The objective of the former is to enable computers to recognize human faces and that of the latter is to provide a natural and impressive interface in the form of a “face” for communication media. These technologies have also been found to be useful in various fields related to the face, such as psychology, anthropology, cosmetology, and dentistry. Although most of the studies in these fields have been carried out independently, the above technologies provide for a common study tool among them. This paper focuses on processing facial information by computer. First, recent research trends on the synthesis of facial images and recognition of facial expressions are outlined. After considering the various characteristics of the face, the engineering applications of facial information are discussed from two standpoints: the support of face-to-face communication between humans, and communication between human and machine using facial information. The tools and databases used in studying facial information processing and some related topics are also described. © 1998 Scripta Technica, Electron Comm Jpn Pt 3, 81(10): 36–57, 1998