LIP Contour Extraction Using a Deformable Model

The use of visual information from lip movements can improve the accuracy and robustness of a speech recognition system. Accurate extraction of visual features associated with the lips is thus very important. In this paper, we present a deformable model-based technique for lip contour extraction from color lip images. The geometric lip model we proposed is able to fit different lip shapes. Our method starts by generating a probability map of the lip image using spatial fuzzy clustering. Then the optimum set of model parameters that partitions a lip probability map into lip region and non-lip region is found, such that the joint probability of the two regions is maximised. Experimental results indicate that accurate and robust lip contour extraction is possible using this approach.