Exploiting statistical properties of wavelet coefficient for face detection and recognition

Wavelet transforms (WT) are widely accepted as an essential tool for image processing and analysis. Image and video compression, image watermarking, content-base image retrieval, face recognition, texture analysis, and image feature extraction are all but few examples. It provides an alternative tool for short time analysis of quasi-stationary signals, such as speech and image signals, in contrast to the traditional short-time Fourier transform. The Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) is a special case of the WT, which provides a compact representation of a signal in the time and frequency domain. In particular, wavelet transforms are capable of representing smooth patterns as well anomalies (e.g. edges and sharp corners) in images. We are focusing here on using wavelet transforms statistical properties for facial feature detection, which allows us to extract the image facial feature/edges easily. Wavelet sub-bands segmentation method been developed and used to clean up the non-significant wavelet coefficients in wavelet sub-band (k) based on the (k-1) sub-band. Moreover, erosion which is considered as one of the fundamental operation in morphological image processing, been used to reduce the unwanted edges in certain directions. For face detection, face template profiles been built for both the face and the eyes for different wavelet sub-band levels to achieve better computational performance, these profiles used to match the extracted profiles from the wavelet domain of the input image using the Dynamic Time Warping technique DTW. The DTW smallest distance allows identifying the face and the eyes location. The performance of face features distances and ratio has been also tested for face verification purposes. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)