Detection of human faces in visual scenes

Abstract

This paper presents a neural network based high-speed system to detect faces in any visual scene. This paper proposes a high-speed and accurate method to search for human faces using a "Knowledge" pruned small sized neural network, and skin colour detection using threshold method with confirmation by a skin colour detection neural network (TSCD). This project is made up of two parts: the face detecting system (FDS) and the TSCD. The FDS that is used to detect faces is made up of a knowledge pruned face locator, a down sampler, and a merger. The TSCD does a high-speed reduction of the face search area to skin regions (and then to face candidates). The TSCD assumes, correctly, that a human face (without wearing any mask or painting) in a visual scene can only be found in a skin colour region. However, all skin regions containing faces must be found otherwise the overall system accuracy goes down.