Human ear detection from side face range images

Ear detection is an important part of an ear recognition system. In this paper, we address human ear detection from side face range images. We introduce a simple and an effective method to detect ears, which has two stages: offline model template building and on-line detection. The model template is represented by an averaged histogram of shape index. The on-line detection is a four-step process: step edge detection and thresholding, image dilation, connect-component labeling and template matching. Experimental results with real ear images are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.