Skin segmentation using color and edge information

An algorithm for segmenting skin regions in color images using color and edge information is presented. Skin colored regions are first detected using a Bayesian model of the human skin color. These regions are further segmented into skin region candidates that satisfy the homogeneity property of the human skin. We show that Bayesian skin color model outperforms many other models such as the piece-wise linear models, Gaussian models and model based on multilayer perceptrons. Experimental results indicate that the proposed segmentation algorithm reduces false detection caused by background pixels having skin colors, and more significantly it is capable of separating true skin regions from falsely detected regions.