Framework for reliable, real-time facial expression recognition for low resolution images

Rizwan Ahmed Khan (1) , Alexandre Meyer (1) , Hubert Konik (2) , Saïda Bouakaz (1)

1 SAARA - Simulation, Analyse et Animation pour la Réalité Augmentée
2 LHC - Laboratoire Hubert Curien

Automatic recognition of facial expressions is a challenging problem specially for low spatial resolution facial images. It has many potential applications in human-computer interactions, social robots, deceit detection, interactive video and behavior monitoring. In this study we present a novel framework that can recognize facial expressions very efficiently and with high accuracy even for very low resolution facial images. The proposed framework is memory and time efficient as it extracts texture features in a pyramidal fashion only from the perceptual salient regions of the face. We tested the framework on different databases, which includes Cohn-Kanade (CK+) posed facial expression database, spontaneous expressions of MMI facial expression database and FG-NET facial expressions and emotions database (FEED) and obtained very good results. Moreover, our proposed framework exceeds state-of-the-art methods for expression recognition on low resolution images.

Mots clés: Salient facial regions; Facial expression recognition; Low resolution images; Local binary pattern; Image pyramid

Domaines: Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]; Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]

Rizwan Ahmed Khan, Alexandre Meyer, Hubert Konik, Saïda Bouakaz. Framework for reliable, real-time facial expression recognition for low resolution images. Pattern Recognition Letters, 2013, 34 (10), pp.1159-1168. ⟨10.1016/j.patrec.2013.03.022⟩. ⟨hal-00817293⟩