Stereo head/face detection and tracking

The paper presents a real-time head/face tracking system that uses synchronized disparity and intensity frames from stereo cameras. It integrates stereo, morphological watershed, gradient and feature extraction techniques to track the head/face. The face is tracked once the facial features, e.g. eyebrows, eyes, mouth and nostrils, are available. The head is tracked if the facial features are not available, e.g., when the person is distant from the stereo camera system or when the head is viewed in profile. Our approach automatically initializes without user intervention and can be re-initialized automatically if tracking of the 3D face pose is lost. The results on our face database and real image video sequences illustrate the effectiveness of the method.