Patent ID: 6816611
Filing Date: 2004-11-09
Classification: G06K

Abstract:
A facial region extraction method for extracting a facial region of a person from a color image, comprising:a detection step of detecting a flesh tone region; a generation step of generating a projective distribution of the detected flesh tone region; an obtaining step of obtaining a graph of the projective distribution; a search step of searching a parabola corresponding to the graph; an extraction step of extracting a facial region candidate from a position of the parabola found by the search; and a determination step of determining if the extracted facial region candidate is a facial region, wherein said search step includes a step of searching for a parabola by a genetic algorithm that matches the projective distribution against the parabola with changing parameters of the parabola, and wherein, at said search step, a slope and a vertex defining a parabola are used as a chromosome in the genetic algorithm and the search of the parabola is performed with crossing over or mutating the chromosome.