Android Face recognition & get similar faces from the database

Question

In my application I'm going to implement an image search like Google image search. Only difference is here I'm searching only for human faces. Here's how it goes..

• user take a picture of a person using the camera.
• my app should identify the face of that person and get details from the image regarding the face (eg: colors).
• Using those details app will do a search in the image database for similar faces.
• Finally it'll display results to the user.

So I want to recognize faces using Android face recognition class and select that recognized area and save the details of that face into an array or a database.

I got few questions on above scenario.

• what are the things I need from that image to do a proper image search?
• Can I do it only using colors?
• Do you have any idea on getting pixel details from that recognized face? I know how to do it on bitmap images. But i'm not sure that method still works with the face recognition class.

Can anyone explain those thing to me please?

Answer 1

Use OpenCV's Recognition API.

I wrote a bit about how to set it up in another question.

Answer 2

I recommend you too to use OpenCV functions, they are well optimized for face detection and recognition .

for recognition, you don't need to colour processing. Since you develop your application on Android, you can use OpenCV4Android

Here there some helpful links, that let you have a good idea to start:

Face Recognition on Android

Here you find a useful tutorial for face detection and recognition

http://www.shervinemami.info/faceRecognition.html

I also recommend you to apply the detection api that already implemented in android stuff:

http://pi-virtualworld.blogspot.com.br/2013/04/android-opencv-face-detection.html

In order to prepare a clean and a proper face database, which in turn enhance the goodness of recognition results, don' forget to align faces http://bytefish.de/blog/aligning_face_images/

Try and test already benchmark face database, to evaluate your implementation:

http://vis-www.cs.umass.edu/lfw/#deepfunnel-anchor

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/dtg/attarchive/facedatabase.html