Real-time face location on gray-scale static images

This work presents a new approach to automatic face location on gray-scale static images with complex backgrounds. In a first stage our technique approximately detects the image positions where the probability of finding a face is high; during the second stage the location accuracy of the candidate faces is improved and their existence is verified. The experimentation shows that the algorithm performs very well both in terms of detection rate (just one missed detection on 70 images) and of efficiency (about 13 images/s can be processed on Hardware Intel Pentium II 266 MHz). (C) 2000 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.