Automatic facial flaw detection and retouching via discriminative structure tensor. Issue 11 (13th September 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Liu, Xin; Xie, Lu; Zhong, Bineng; Du, Ji‐Xiang; Peng, Qinmu
• Is Part Of: IET image processing. Volume 11:Issue 11(2017)
• Page Start: 1068
• Page End: 1076
• Publication Date: 2017-09-13
• Subjects: face recognition -- tensors -- Gaussian processes -- image colour analysis; automatic facial flaw detection -- automatic facial flaw retouching -- face images -- tensor‐based inpainting algorithm -- inpainting priority adjustment -- facial skin regions -- OSTU operation -- YCbCr space -- Gaussian skin model -- saliency model -- nonlinear structure tensor -- discriminative structure tensor; Image processing -- Periodicals; 621.36705
• DOI: 10.1049/iet-ipr.2016.1095
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1751-9659

Abstract

Abstract : Facial retouching has been increasingly applied in current social media and entertainment industries. In this study, the authors propose an efficient approach to automatically detect and retouch the facial flaws by using discriminative structure tensor. First, a non‐linear structure tensor associated with saliency model is exploited to discriminatively and automatically detect the significant facial flaws. Then, a Gaussian skin model is constructed in YCbCr space and the OSTU operation is simultaneously utilised to precisely mark the facial skin regions, in which the mouth, eyebrows and nostril parts are excluded. Subsequently, diverse structure tensor is employed to discriminatively adjust the inpainting priority and propose a structure tensor‐based inpainting algorithm to retouch the detected flaws. Without manual intervention, the extensive experiments have shown its effectiveness in marking the freckles, blemishes and moles in face images, and the retouching performance is visually pleasing in comparison with state‐of‐the‐art counterparts.