Fast face segmentation in component color space

A fast face segmentation color-based method is presented. The characterization of the decision thresholds along the skin color distribution, constituting a non-rectangular decision region for skin detection in the YCgCr color space, is analyzed. Besides, a transformation based on the skin representation in the chrominance plane is proposed for skin detection improvement. Basically, it is based on the rotation of the Cg and Cr axes in the chrominance plane, so that a boundary box can be used for face segmentation. Segmentation tests have been performed on a set of portrait-like images with different lighting conditions. Two types of decision thresholds have been obtained for detecting the whole head or just the skin region. The face detection results achieved in the segmentation process have also been compared to those using the YCgCr decision thresholds.