Recognising facial expressions in video sequences

We introduce a system that processes a sequence of images of a front-facing human face and recognises a set of facial expressions. We use an efficient appearance-based face tracker to locate the face in the image sequence and estimate the deformation of its non-rigid components. The tracker works in real-time. It is robust to strong illumination changes and factors out changes in appearance caused by illumination from changes due to face deformation. We adopt a model-based approach for facial expression recognition. In our model, an image of a face is represented by a point in a deformation space. The variability of the classes of images associated to facial expressions are represented by a set of samples which model a low-dimensional manifold in the space of deformations. We introduce a probabilistic procedure based on a nearest-neighbour approach to combine the information provided by the incoming image sequence with the prior information stored in the expression manifold in order to compute a posterior probability associated to a facial expression. In the experiments conducted we show that this system is able to work in an unconstrained environment with strong changes in illumination and face location. It achieves an 89\% recognition rate in a set of 333 sequences from the Cohn-Kanade data base

Review of classifier combination methods

Summary. Classifier combination methods have proved to be an effective tool to increase the performance of pattern recognition applications. In this chapter we review and categorize major advancements in this field. Despite a significant number of publications describing successful classifier combination implementations, the theoretical basis is still missing and achieved improvements are inconsistent. By introducing different categories of classifier combinations in this review we attempt to put forward more specific directions for future theoretical research. We also introduce a retraining effect and effects of locality based training as important properties of classifier combinations. Such effects have significant influence on the performance of combinations, and their study is necessary for complete theoretical understanding of combination algorithms.