Active shape models with SIFT descriptors and MARS

We present a technique for locating landmarks in images of human faces. We replace the 1D gradient profiles of the classical Active Shape Model (ASM) (Cootes and Taylor, 1993) with a simplified form of SIFT descriptors (Lowe, 2004), and use Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) (Friedman, 1991) for descriptor matching. This modified ASM is fast and performs well against existing techniques for automatic face landmarking on frontal faces.