Adaptive Method for Improvement of Human Skin Detection in Colour

Abstract

In this paper a new approach to detect human skin in colour images is proposed. The method uses the classification of the three colour components of the RGB system (Red, Green and Blue), with a new approach to skin classifiers and face detection. The developed approach uses an adaptive methodology embedded in the skin classifier algorithm and a new face detection method to determine the location of the face in the image, improving the detection of the skin pixels and therefore reducing simultaneously the computational burden. The developed adaptive method varies the parameters of the base detection algorithm, for each one of the RGB colour components, in order to reduce the influence of external disturbances, namely the different illumination conditions. Experimental tests validate the proposed methodology showing very good results, in terms of skin detection with very different characteristics in face morphology, different backgrounds and illumination conditions.