US Patent 7426287 Face detecting system and method using symmetric axis

A face detecting system using a symmetric axis includes: an image inputting unit for inputting a still image thereto; an image converting unit for reducing the inputted image to a first certain size of image for a real-time process by using a pyramidal resolution reduction way; a scanning unit for scanning the reduced image by applying a second certain size of symmetric mask; a region dividing unit for dividing a region of the scanned mask into a left region and a right region with respect to the symmetric axis; a symmetric-similarity computing unit for computing a symmetric similarity of a local region at the two divided regions and then computing a symmetric similarity of a global region to compute a symmetric similarity of a face region; and a face region extracting unit for extracting a region having a symmetric axis at which the computed symmetric similarity is above a predetermined value, as the face region.