Real-time face tracking in a digital image acquisition device

1. A method of detecting faces in an image stream, comprising:

receiving an acquired image from said image stream including one or more face regions;

sub-sampling said acquired image at a specified resolution to provide a sub-sampled image;

identifying one or more regions of said acquired image predominantly including skin tones;

calculating a corresponding integral image for at least one of said skin tone regions of said sub-sampled acquired image;

applying face detection to at least a portion of said integral image to provide a set of one or more candidate face regions each having a given size and a respective location; and

responsive to failing to detect at least one face region for said image, enhancing the contrast of the luminance characteristics for at least a region corresponding to one of said skin tone regions in a subsequently acquired image.

2. A method as claimed in claim 1 , in a face detection mode of said digital image acquisition device, each new acquired image is acquired with progressively increased exposure parameters until at least one candidate face region is detected.

3. A method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said enhancing is responsive to a maximum value of said luminance being below a threshold value to increase low values of luminance of said candidate region or said acquired image.

4. A method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said enhancing is responsive to a minimum value of said luminance being above a threshold value to decrease high values of luminance of said candidate region or said acquired image.

5. A method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said enhancing is responsive to a value of said variance of said luminance being above a threshold value to stop enhancing said candidate region or said acquired image.

6. An image processing apparatus including one or more processors and one or more digital storage media having digitally-encoded instructions embedded therein for programming the one or more processors to perform an iterative method of detecting faces in an image stream, the method comprising:

receiving an acquired image from said image stream including one or more face regions;

sub-sampling said acquired image at a specified resolution to provide a sub-sampled image;

identifying one or more regions of said acquired image predominantly including skin tones;

calculating a corresponding integral image for at least one of said skin tone regions of said sub-sampled acquired image;

applying face detection to at least a portion of said integral image to provide a set of one or more candidate face regions each having a given size and a respective location; and

responsive to failing to detect at least one face region for said image, enhancing the contrast of the luminance characteristics for at least a region corresponding to one of said skin tone regions in a subsequently acquired image.

7. An apparatus as claimed in claim 6 , in a face detection mode of said apparatus, each new acquired image is acquired with progressively increased exposure parameters until at least one candidate face region is detected.

8. An apparatus as claimed in claim 6 , wherein said enhancing is responsive to a maximum value of said luminance being below a threshold value to increase low values of luminance of said candidate region or said acquired image.

9. An apparatus as claimed in claim 6 , wherein said enhancing is responsive to a minimum value of said luminance being above a threshold value to decrease high values of luminance of said candidate region or said acquired image.

10. An apparatus as claimed in claim 6 , wherein said enhancing is responsive to a value of said variance of said luminance being above a threshold value to stop enhancing said candidate region or said acquired image.

11. One or more non-transitory processor-readable digital storage media having digitally-encoded instructions embedded therein for programming one or more processors to perform an iterative method of detecting faces in an image stream, the method comprising:

receiving an acquired image from said image stream including one or more face regions;

sub-sampling said acquired image at a specified resolution to provide a sub-sampled image;

identifying one or more regions of said acquired image predominantly including skin tones by applying one of a number of filters to define said one or more regions of said acquired image predominantly including skin tones, at least one of said filters including a restrictive skin filter and at least one of said filters including a relaxed skin filter;

calculating a corresponding integral image for at least one of said skin tone regions of said sub-sampled acquired image;

applying face detection to at least a portion of said integral image to provide a set of one or more candidate face regions each having a given size and a respective location; and

responsive to failing to detect at least one face region for said image, enhancing the contrast of the luminance characteristics for at least a region corresponding to one of said skin tone regions in a subsequently acquired image.

12. One or more non-transitory processor-readable digital storage media as claimed in claim 11 , wherein said enhancing is responsive to a maximum value of said luminance being below a threshold value to increase low values of luminance of said candidate region or said acquired image.

13. One or more non-transitory processor-readable digital storage media as claimed in claim 11 , wherein said enhancing is responsive to a minimum value of said luminance being above a threshold value to decrease high values of luminance of said candidate region or said acquired image.

14. One or more non-transitory processor-readable digital storage media as claimed in claim 11 , wherein said enhancing is responsive to a value of said variance of said luminance being above a threshold value to stop enhancing said candidate region or said acquired image.