Tracking of Human Hands and Faces through Probabilistic Fusion of Multiple Visual Cues

This paper presents a new approach for real time detection and tracking of human hands and faces in image sequences. The proposed method builds upon our previous research on color-based tracking and extends it towards building a system capable of distinguishing between human hands, faces and other skin-colored regions in the image background. To achieve these goals, the proposed approach allows the utilization of additional information cues including motion information given by means of a background subtraction algorithm, and top-down information regarding the formed image segments such as their spatial location, velocity and shape. All information cues are combined under a probabilistic framework which furnishes the proposed approach with the ability to cope with uncertainty due to noise. The proposed approach runs in real time on a standard, personal computer. The presented experimental results, confirm the effectiveness of the proposed methodology and its advantages over previous approaches.