This paper addresses our proposed method to automatically segment out a per
son's face from a given image that consists of a head-and-shoulders view of
the person and a complex: background scene. The method involves a fast, re
liable, and effective algorithm that exploits the spatial distribution char
acteristics of human skin color. A universal skin-color map is derived and
used on the chrominance component of the input image to detect pixels with
skin-color appearance. Then, based on the spatial distribution of the detec
ted skin-color pixels and their corresponding luminance values, the algorit
hm employs a set of novel regularization processes to reinforce regions of
skin-color pixels that are more likely to belong to the facial regions and
eliminate those that are not. The performance of the face-segmentation algo
rithm is illustrated by some simulation results carried out on various head
-and-shoulders test images.
The use of face segmentation for video coding in applications such as video
telephony is then presented. We explain how the face-segmentation results c
an be used to improve the perceptual quality of a videophone sequence encod
ed by the H.261-compliant coder.