Face Detection

Embedded Hardware Face Detection
T. Theocharides, G. Link, N. Vijaykrishnan, M. J. Irwin, W. Wolf. 
Proceedings of the International Conference on VLSI Design, 
Mubai, India, January 2004, IEEE, January, 2004.

Abstract

Face detection is the first step towards face recognition and is a vital task 
in surveillance and security applications. Current software implementations of 
face detection algorithms lack the computational ability to support detection 
in real time video streams. Consequently, this work focuses on the design of 
special-purpose hardware for performing rotation invariant face detection. The 
synthesized design using 160nm technology is found to operate at 409.5 kHz 
providing a throughput of 424 frames per second and consumes 7 Watts of power. 
The synthesized design provided 75% accuracy in detecting faces from a set of 
55 images that is competitive with existing software implementations that 
provide around 80-85% accuracy.

Paper