Picture processing by computer has found its application in various
fields. Character recognition has shown the most practical success.
Furthermore, the techniques span much more sophisticated applications
such as interpretation of biomedical images and X-ray films, measurement
of images in nuclear physics, processing of a large volume of pictorial
data sent from the satellites, etc. The particular problem attacked in
this thesis is computer analysis and identification of human faces.
Pictures of human faces are successfully analyzed by a computer program
which extracts face- feature points, such as nose, mouth, eyes, and so
on. The program was tested with more than 800 photographs The research
has been done with main emphasis on the method of how to incorporate the
picture structures into the picture anlysis program. The success of the
program is due to the employment of a flexible picture analysis scheme
with feedbacks, which will be described in the next chapter. An
experiment on face identification of 20 people was also conducted. I-1.
Picture Analysis and Recognition- New Aspects When shown the pictures of
the human face of Fig. 1-1, we can immediately tell the positions of the
nose, mouth and eyes; and more- over, we can say that both pictures
surely portray the same person. Picture analysis and recognition by
computer concerns itself with this type of two-dimensional image
processing. In this thesis, I selected human-face pictures as objects of
processing.