Robust active shape model construction and fitting for facial feature localization

Active Shape Model (ASM) has proved to be a powerful tool for interpreting face images. However, it may fail in the presence of non-Gaussian noise, or outliers. In this paper, we present a framework for both automatic model construction and efficient model fitting with outliers. In model construction, the training face samples are automatically labeled by local image search using Gabor wavelet features. Then robust principle component analysis (RFCA) is applied to capture the statistics of shape variations. In model fitting, an error function is introduced to deal with the outlier problem, which provides a connection to robust M-estimation. Gauss-Newton algorithm is adopted to efficiently optimize the robust energy function. Extensive experiments demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of our approach over previous methods. ? Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.EI