Face detection and tracking using a Boosted Adaptive Particle Filter

A novel algorithm, termed a Boosted Adaptive Particle Filter (BAPF), for integrated face detection and face tracking is proposed. The proposed algorithm is based on the synthesis of an adaptive particle filtering algorithm and the AdaBoost face detection algorithm. An Adaptive Particle Filter (APF), based on a new sampling technique, is proposed. The APF is shown to yield more accurate estimates of the proposal distribution and the posterior distribution than the standard Particle Filter thus enabling more accurate tracking in video sequences. In the proposed BAPF algorithm, the AdaBoost algorithm is used to detect faces in input image frames, whereas the APF algorithm is designed to track faces in video sequences. The proposed BAPF algorithm is employed for face detection, face verification, and face tracking in video sequences. Experimental results show that the proposed BAPF algorithm provides a means for robust face detection and accurate face tracking under various tracking scenarios.