2017 International Conference on Advanced Computing and Communication Systems (ICACCS -2017), Jan.
06 – 07, 2017, Coimbatore, INDIA
Illumination Invariant Face Detection Using
Viola Jones Algorithm
Mangayarkarasi Nehru 1,
1 2
First year M.Tech (CVIP),
Department of Computer Science and Engineering,
Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore,
Amrita Vishwa Vidhyapeetham,
Amrita University, India.
1 2
mangainehru@gmail.com
Abstract: In the recent days, there has been a wide
advancement in human computing systems. It always
remains a challenge to make the computer system
behave like how a human senses things. Computer
Vision has been a pioneer in making things more
automated and better for humans. This paper presents
a study based approach for detecting human faces
using the Viola Jones algorithm. We train our
computer to automatically identify the human faces
from the given images irrespective of the illumination
conditions. Based on the experimental results we have
discussed about the Viola -Jones Cascade Object
Detector which uses various filters and the features to
detect the various parts of the face.
Keywords – SURF, Feature Detection, Face Recognition,
Face Detection, Viola-Jones algorithm
I.INTRODUCTION
The main objective is to design a system that detects
and recognizes the human faces from the input image or
video. It is possible to detect various parts of the human
body based on the facial features present. It is always easy
for a human to detect the faces from the given set of
images and distinguish them appropriately. But for a
system, it should be properly trained such that when a live
dataset is give by the use it should be able to detect the
face of a human and also various other features like eyes,
nose, mouth etc.. The main idea perceived here is to make
the computers detect the faces besides the non-facial
structures present in an image and finally to output the
image with the detected part selected in it. The
challenging part of this paper is to make the system detect
the faces irrespective of the illumination conditions.
II.PROPOSED ALGORITHM
We use the Viola – Jones algorithm to efficiently
detect various parts of the human faces. When every other
people were busy to find the algorithm that would detect
the faces it was Paul Viola and Michael Jones in 2001
who came up with the most effective algorithm to detect
the human faces and its parts thus providing a framework
which was considered as the first ever object detection
frame work that provided object detection in real time.
This algorithm was designed using the Matlab toolbox as
978-1-5090-4559-4/17/$31.00©2017IEEE
Dr. Padmavathi S 2
Assistant Professor,
Department of Computer Science and Engineering,
Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore,
Amrita Vishwa Vidhyapeetham,
Amrita University, India.
s_padmavathi@cb.amrita.edu
a framework model that was placed under the Computer
Vision toolbox which used the vision. Cascade Object
Detector. This included certain parameters like Use ROI ,
Scale Factor ,Min Size, Max Size , Merge Threshold,
Classification Model. Initial step is to train the cascade
classification model for which the Classification Model is
used. The size of the smallest and largest object that can
be detected uses Min Size and Max Size parameters[1]. In
case where there are more humans found there multiple
detections found surrounding the object whose criteria
will be defined by Merge Threshold. As a result this
parameter creates a bounding box around the target object.
Sometimes there might be misclassifications leading to
false detections. This can be suppressed by increasing the
threshold value. It is possible to tune this property. On set
this property to 0, [2]all the detections made can be
returned without the threshold being performed. For multi
scale object detection we use the parameter Scale Factor
which has the value greater than 1.0001.It resolution is
scaled between the Min Size and Max Size.
There are three basic methods used by Viola-Jones
method [1]which is as follows:
1. Haar-like features are used for the feature
extraction thus getting an Integral image.
2. A machine-learning technique called Ada Boost
can be used for face detection. Since the
classifiers are very complex, using the boosting
techniques the basic classifiers are built.
3. The final method is Cascade classifier which can
efficiently combine many features. In this, the
resultant classifier has several filters.
Once the strong classifiers are cascaded, the face and
non-face regions can be separated. This object detector
also efficiently detects the nose, Upper body, Lips, eyes
and pupil. This paper discusses about the various feature
vectors that can be used to detect a face using the
algorithm[4]. The face detection is controlled by the
cascade object detection framework. The advantage of the
proposed idea is that it can detect faces irrespective of
illumination conditions. The Haar feature extraction is the
major part in this process which uses Haar cascade
classifier. These Haar feature can tell us if there is any
feature present in the given image. Each feature returns a
single value which is given by the difference of sum of
2017 International Conference on Advanced Computing and Communication Systems (ICACCS -2017), Jan. 06 – 07, 2017, Coimbatore, INDIA

the pixels in the white region from the sum of pixels in the
black region. For the speedy detection of the face features
we consider Haar features as the rectangular region. Some
of the Haar filters that can be used in the detection of
faces are given in fig below:
000 features can be calculated which is impossible
practically. So, the Ada boost method is used which is a
machine learning technique that efficiently finds the best
features out of 1,60,000.The Ada boost forms a strong
classifier by taking the linear combination of the weak
classifiers which is given as:

F(x) = α1F1(x) + α2F(x) + (2)

Thus, if the image passes through all the stages then it

is a human face. If it fails even in any one of the stages
then it is not a human face. This gives an overall
description of the algorithm and how it is found

III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

In this paper we consider certain constraints and
check if the faces are detected for all the different datasets
and meet the conditions. First we considered the datasets
of dark and fair colored men with and without glasses and
Fig:2.1 checked if face detection is possible. The black and white
image was also considered over here.The results were as
It is calculated as in (1) shown in fig: A bounding box was drawn around the
S(x) = Sum of black region / Sum of White region (1) detected face.

Initially when the image is fed as the input to the

system, the first step is to select the Haar features. It starts
to scan the image from the top left point and checks if any
face feature is present till it reaches the bottom right
corner of the image. In order to detect the faces from the
image we scan it several times using the Haar features.
The rectangular features are calculated rapidly using the
integral image. In this method, we will need only four
values that are present at the each corner of the rectangle
to[5] calculate the sum of the pixels present in any given
region. For an integral image, value at a point (a,b) is
given by the sum of all pixels present above and in the left
of (a,b).

Fig:2.2

Here in the fig: we find the Haar like features. There

is only one region and its black, so it is given as:
f0(x)=A.Lets consider one more filter as in fig:

Fig:3.1

Fig:2.3

This is given as: f1(x)= B-A-C and f2(x)= B+C-A-

D.In Voila Jones algorithm a window with size 24×24 is
used as the base window for evaluating the features in the
given image. In general using this window, about 1, 60,
2017 International Conference on Advanced Computing and Communication Systems (ICACCS -2017), Jan. 06 – 07, 2017, Coimbatore, INDIA

Fig: 3.4

The final criteria were to check for the face detection

of the masked and half-covered faces which gave a
Fig:3.2 positive result as shown in Fig: 3.5

Next case was to check if the face detection is

possible for the side faces as in Fig: 3.3 and also to check
if the faces were if a group of people were there under any
light conditions. The Fig: 3.4 give the resultant matlab
output for the required criteria.

Fig: 3.6
Thus we preserve our results for the further extension
of this project.

Fig: 3.3
2017 International Conference on Advanced Computing and Communication Systems (ICACCS -2017), Jan. 06 – 07, 2017, Coimbatore, INDIA

IV.CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS
As the face detection is becoming an essential need in
various application like face recognition, emotion
recognition and classification, identifying malpractices in
exams and various other problems. We try to extend this
idea for creating an automated attendance system in
classrooms where when the student enters the classroom
the camera will detect the faces of each student entering
the classrooms and will mark attendance for
corresponding students after recognizing the faces thus
updating the attendance for each class in the database
automatically.
[10]. R.-L. Hsu, M. Abdel-Mottaleb, and A. K. Jain, Face
Detection in Color Images, IEEE Transaction on
Pattern Analysis and Machine Learning, 24 (5) (2002)
696-706.
[11]. C. Zhang and Z. Zhang, A Survey of Recent
Advances in face Detection, Technical Report, MSR-
TR-2010-66, Microsoft Research, Microsoft
Corporation, June 2010.
[12]. Viola, Paul, and Michael J. Jones. "Robust real-time face
detection."International journal of computer vision 57.2
(2004): 137-154.
[13]. Yow, Kin Choong, and Roberto Cipolla. "Feature-based
human face detection." Image and vision computing 15.9
(1997): 713-735

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