Face detection using 3-D time-of-flight and colour cameras

This paper presents a novel method to apply standard 2-D face detection methods on 3-D data. The procedure uses a sensor setup consisting of a 3-D time-of-flight camera and a colour camera. At first, face detection is performed on the less structured and low-resolution 3-D range image. Only for those areas regarded as faces on the 3-D range image, processing continues on the corresponding high-resolution 2-D colour image areas. This enables a pre-filtering of the visible area prior to the actual face detection step on selected colour regions.