Automatic Body Feature Extraction from Front and Side Images

Human body feature extraction based on 2D images provides an efficient method for many applications, e.g. non-contact body size measurements, constructing 3D human model and recognizing human actions. In this paper a systematic approach is proposed to detect feature points of human body automatically from its front and side images. Firstly, an efficient approach for silhouette and contour detection is used to represent the contour curves of a human body shape with Freeman’s 8-connected chain codes. The contour curves are considered as a number of segments connected together. Then, a series of feature points on human body are extracted based on the specified rules by measuring the differences between the directions of the segments. In total, 101 feature points with clearly geometric properties (that rather accurately reflect the bump or turning of the contours) are extracted automatically, including 27 points corresponding to the definitions of the landmarks about garment measurements. Finally, the proposed approach was tested on ten human subjects and the entire 101 feature points with specific geography geometrical characteristics were correctly extracted, indicating an effective and robust performance.