Automatical detection of face features and exact face contour

The approach based on the mathematical morphology and the variational calculus is presented for the detection of an exact face contour in still grayscale images. The facial features (eyes and lips) are detected by using the mathematical morphology and the heuristic rules. Using these features an image is filtered and an edge map is prepared. The face contour is detected by minimizing its internal and external energy. The internal energy is defined by the contour tension and the rigidity. The external energy is defined by using the generalized gradient vector flow field of the image edge map. Initial contour is calculated using the detected face features. The contour detection experiments were performed using the database of 427 face images. Automatically detected contours were compared with manually labeled contours using an area and the Euclidean distance-based error measures. 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.