Dynamic cell structures for the evaluation of keypoints in facial images

In this contribution Dynamic Cell Structures (DCS network) are applied to classify local image structures at particular facial landmarks. The facial landmarks such as the corners of the eyes or intersections of the iris with the eyelid are computed in advance by a combined model and data driven sequential search strategy. To reduce the detection error after the processing of the sequential search strategy, the computed image positions are verified applying a DCS network. The DCS network is trained by supervised learning with feature vectors which encode spatially arranged edge and structural information at the keypoint position considered. The model driven localization as well as the data driven verification are based on steerable filters, which build a representation comparable with one provided by a receptive field in the human visual system. We apply a DCS based classifier because of its ability to grasp the topological structure of complex input spaces and because it has proved successful in a number of other classification tasks. In our experiments the average error resulting from false positive classifications is less than 1%.