Patent ID: 9600711
Date: 2017-03-21
CPC Classifications: G06K

Claim:
1. A computer implemented method of detecting, extracting and classifying a facial expression associated with a human face, the human face initially captured with an image capturing system, the method comprising: a) training an expression classifier on features extracted from facial expression images labeled with one of a plurality of human face expression classes; b) acquiring a surveillance video sequence using at least one video camera operatively connected to a computer, the video sequence including one or more frames including a human face; c) detecting in the video sequence the one or more frames including the human face and extracting a facial region associated with the detected human face; d) automatically detecting and localizing within the extracted facial region a periocular region associated with the extracted facial region by initially estimating the location of the periocular region within the extracted facial region based on an average geometric relationship of an average periocular region relative to an average extracted facial region associated with an average human face, and subsequently processing a subregion of the extracted facial region substantially centered about the initial estimate of the location of the periocular region to calculate an actual location of the periocular region associated with the extracted facial region and segmenting the extracted facial region of the frame including the human face about the actual location of the detected and localized periocular region based on an average geometric relationship of the average human face relative to a location of the average periocular region and the segmented facial region including a greater total number of pixels than the periocular region; e) processing the segmented facial region associated with the frame including the human face to a predetermined lighting and scale condition; f) extracting representative features associated with the segmented facial region; and g) classifying automatically the expression of the segmented facial region by querying the extracted representative features associated with the segmented facial region into the expression classifier, the expression classifier outputting one of the plurality of expression classes associated with the segmented facial region.