Face detection based on color adaptation

A method for the detection and tracking of human face in color images is described in this paper. A skin color model in r,g,b chrominance space is used for segmenting skin color regions from non-skin color region. The best-fit rectangle of the skin color region is labeled as a candidate face. But the face skin color is sensitive to the change of the environment illumination. An algorithm is proposed to update the skin color model's parameters in time so that the model is adapted to different lighting conditions. The confidence measure is presented to evaluate the reliability of skin color model. Experiments demonstrate that the self-adaptive color model is more effective than the fixed model. The color adaptation makes that the color model can be better fit to the more complex application environment.