Fast and Robust Face Detection Using Evolutionary Pruning

Face detection task can be considered as a classifier training problem. Finding the parameters of the classifier model by using training data is a complex process. To solve such a complex problem, evolutionary algorithms can be employed in cascade structure of classifiers. This paper proposes evolutionary pruning to reduce the number of weak classifiers in AdaBoost-based cascade detector, while maintaining the detection accuracy. The computation time is proportional to the number of weak classifiers and, therefore, a reduction in the number of weak classifiers results in an increased detection speed. Three kinds of cascade structures are compared by the number of weak classifiers. The efficiency in computation time of the proposed cascade structure is shown experimentally. It is also compared with the state-of-the-art face detectors, and the results show that the proposed method outperforms the previous studies. A multiview face detector is constructed by incorporating the three face detectors: frontal, left profile, and right profile.