Segmentation of Different Skin Colors with Different Lighting Conditions by Combining Graph Cuts Algorithm with Probability Neural Network Classification, and its Application

Abstract

It is realized that fixed thresholds mostly fail in two circumstances as they only search for a certain range of skin color: (i) any skin-like object may be classified as skin if skin-like colors belong to fixed threshold range; (ii) any true skin for different races may be mistakenly classified as non-skin if that skin colors do not belong to fixed threshold range. In this paper, graph cuts (GC) is first extended to skin color segmentation. Although its result is acceptable, a complex environment with skin-like objects or different skin colors or different lighting conditions often results in a partial success. It is also known that probability neural network (PNN) has the advantage of recognizing different skin colors in cluttered environments. Therefore, many images with skin-like objects or different skin colors or different lighting conditions are segmented by the proposed algorithm (i.e., the combination of GC algorithm and PNN classification with other functions, e.g., morphology filtering, labeling, area constraint). The compared results among GC algorithm, PNN classification, and the proposed algorithm are presented not only to verify the accurate segmentation of these images but also to reduce the computation time. Finally, the application to the classification of hand gestures in complex environment with different lighting conditions further confirms the effectiveness and efficiency of our method.