A real time implementation of a pose invariant face recognition engine with a novel face segmentation algorithm

In this paper we propose a fast and efficient algorithm for segmenting a face suitable for recognition from a video sequence. We first obtain a coarse face region using skin color, then using dynamic template matching the face is efficiently segmented at varying scale and pose in real time. We have also developed and tested some heuristics which localizes only the face region, even when subjects are wearing skin color dress. The segmented face is then handed over to a recognition algorithm based on principal component analysis and linear discriminant analysis. The on-line face detection, segmentation and recognition algorithm takes an average of 0.06 sec on a 3.2 GHz P4 machine.