3D Facial Landmark Tracking and Facial Expression Recognition

In this paper, we address the challenging computer vision problem of obtaining a reliable facial expression analysis from a naturally interacting person. We propose a system that combines a 3D generic face model, 3D head tracking, and 2D tracker to track facial landmarks and recognize expressions. First, we extract facial landmarks from a neutral frontal face, and then we deform a 3D generic face to fit the input face. Next, we use our real-time 3D head tracking module to track a person’s head in 3D and predict facial landmark positions in 2D using the projection from the updated 3D face model. Finally, we use tracked 2D landmarks to update the 3D landmarks. This integrated tracking loop enables efficient tracking of the non-rigid parts of a face in the presence of large 3D head motion. We conducted experiments for facial expression recognition using both framebased and sequence-based approaches. Our method provides a 75.9% recognition rate in 8 subjects with 7 key expressions. Our approach provides a considerable step forward toward new applications including human-computer interactions, behavioral science, robotics, and game applications.