Facial feature extraction using genetic algorithm

Abstract

An automatic facial feature extraction method is presented in this paper. The method is based on the edge density distribution of the image. In the preprocessing stage a face is approximated to an ellipse, and a genetic algorithm is applied to search for the best ellipse region match. In the feature extraction stage, the genetic algorithm is applied to extract the facial features, such as the eyes, nose and mouth, in the predefined sub regions. The simulation results validates that the proposed method is capable of automatically extracting features from various video images effectively under natural lighting environments and in the presence of certain amount of artificial noise and of multi-face oriented with angles.