Face tracking in video with hybrid of Lucas-Kanade and condensation algorithm

In this paper, we present a robust face tracking system for video indexing and retrieval. Our face tracker is designed based on the condensation algorithm. The strength of our face tracking is in the incorporation of Lucas-Kanade feature tracker in the measurement stage of condensation. Skin color and facial feature points are used for tracking. The pros and cons of using color and facial feature points complement each other and ensure the effectiveness of our system. We also adopt a bi-directional tracking approach to enhance the robustness. We demonstrate the efficacy of our technique in the challenging task of tracking faces in various video sources.