Patent ID: 8090151
Filing Date: 2012-01-03
Classification: G06K

Abstract:
1. A face feature point detection apparatus comprising: an image input unit configured to enter an image including a face; a search area setting unit configured to set a search area for detecting a target feature point from the image; an image feature point detection unit configured to detect image feature points from the search area of the image; a first dictionary storage unit configured to store a first dictionary including information relating to peripheral patterns of learning image feature points obtained from a plurality of learning face images and coordinates of relative positions between the respective learning image feature points and learning target feature points associated with respect to each other; a first pattern matching unit configured to select the peripheral patterns of the learning image feature points which are similar to peripheral patterns of the image feature points from the peripheral patterns of a plurality of the learning image feature points in the first dictionary; a target feature point candidate position estimating unit configured to extract coordinates of the relative positions of the learning target feature points corresponding to the selected learning image feature points; a target feature point peripheral pattern detection unit configured to crop a peripheral pattern of the target feature point from the face image on the basis of the extracted coordinates of the relative positions; a second dictionary storage unit configured to store a second dictionary including information relating to peripheral patterns of the learning target feature points obtained from the plurality of learning face images; a second pattern matching unit configured to select the peripheral patterns of the learning target feature points similar to the peripheral pattern of the target feature point from the peripheral patterns of the plurality of learning target feature points in the second dictionary; and a determination unit configured to obtain the position of the target feature point from the similarity between the peripheral pattern of the image feature point and the peripheral patterns of the selected learning image feature points and the similarity between the peripheral pattern of the target feature point and the peripheral patterns of the selected learning target feature points, wherein the first dictionary includes a plurality of classes, wherein the classes each include classes classified by a first clustering on the basis of the relative coordinate and classes classified by a second clustering on the basis of the similarity of the peripheral patterns of the learning image feature points, and wherein a subspace generated on the basis of the feature extracted from the peripheral patterns of the learning image feature points in the respective classes is stored in each class.