Robust and Accurate Eye Contour Extraction

This paper describes a novel algorithm for exact eye contour detection in frontal face image. The exact eye shape is a useful piece of input information for applications like facial expression recognition, feature-based face recognition and face modelling. In contrast to well-known eye-segmentation methods, we do not rely on deformable models or image luminance gradient (edge) map. The eye windows (rough eye regions) are assumed to be known. The detection algorithm works in several steps. First, iris center and radius is estimated, then, exact upper eyelid contour is detected by searching for luminance valley points. Finally, lower eyelid is estimated from the eye corners coordinates and iris. The proposed technique has been tested on images of about fifty individuals taken under different lighting conditions with different cameras. It proved to be sufficiently robust and accurate for wide variety of images.