Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A survey on skin detection in colored images

  • Published:
Artificial Intelligence Review Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Color is an efficient feature for object detection as it has the advantage of being invariant to changes in scaling, rotation, and partial occlusion. Skin color detection is an essential required step in various applications related to computer vision. The rapidly-growing research in human skin detection is based on the premise that information about individuals, intent, mode, and image contents can be extracted from colored images, and computers can then respond in an appropriate manner. Detecting human skin in complex images has proven to be a challenging problem because skin color can vary dramatically in its appearance due to many factors such as illumination, race, aging, imaging conditions, and complex background. However, many methods have been developed to deal with skin detection problem in color images. The purpose of this study is to provide an up-to-date survey on skin color modeling and detection methods. We also discuss relevant issues such as color spaces, cost and risks, databases, testing, and benchmarking. After investigating these methods and identifying their strengths and limitations, we conclude with several implications for future direction.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Adopted from Russ (2007). (Color figure online)

Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9

Adopted from Chen and Wang (2007)

Fig. 10
Fig. 11

Adopted from Liu et al. (2005)

Fig. 12

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Adipranata R, Ballangan CG, Ongkodjojo RP (2008) Fast method for multiple human face segmentation in color image. In: Second international conference on future generation communication and networking, vol 2. Hainan Island, China, pp 158–161

  • Agathos A, Pratikakis I, Perantonis S, Sapidis N, Azariadis P (2007) 3D mesh segmentation methodologies for cad applications. Comput Aided Des Appl 4:827–841

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aghbari ZA, Al-Haj R (2006) Hill-manipulation: an effective algorithm for color image segmentation. Image Vis Comput 24:894–903

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ahlberg J, Ström J, Li H (1999) Extraction and coding of face model parameters. M.Sc. Thesis, Department of Electrical Engineering, Linköpings University, Sweden

  • Albiol A, Torres L, Bouman CA, Delp E (2000) A simple and efficient face detection algorithm for video database applications. In: International conference on image processing, vol 2. IEEE, Vancouver, BC, Canada, pp 239-242

  • Al-Mohair HK, Saleh J, Saundi S (2013) Impact of color space on human skin color detection using an intelligent system. In: 1st WSEAS international conference on image processing and pattern recognition (IPPR’13). pp 178–187, ISBN: 978-960-474-350-6

  • Al-Mohair H, Mohamad-Saleh J, Suandi SA (2014) Color space selection for human skin detection using color-texture features and neural networks. In: International conference on computer and information sciences (ICCOINS)

  • Amine A, Ghouzali S, Rziza M (2006) Face detection in still color images using skin color information. In: Proceedings of international symposium on communications, control, and signal processing (ISCCSP). pp 696–706

  • Barbu T (2014) Pedestrian detection and tracking using temporal differencing and HOG features. Comput Electr Eng 40:1072–1079

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baskan S, Bulut MM, Atalay V (2002) Projection based method for segmentation of human face and its evaluation. Pattern Recognit Lett 23:1623–1629

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Bergasa LM, Mazo M, Gardel A, Sotelo MA, Boquete L (2000) Unsupervised and adaptive gaussian skin-color model. Image Vis Comput 18:987–1003

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brancati N, De Pietro G, Frucci M, Gallo L (2017) Human skin detection through correlation rules between the YCb and YCr subspaces based on dynamic color clustering. Comput Vis Image Underst 155:33–42

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bretzner L, Laptev I, Lindeberg T (2002) Hand gesture recognition using multi-scale colour features, hierarchical models and particle filtering. In: 2002 Proceedings of fifth IEEE international conference on automatic face and gesture recognition. IEEE, pp 423–428

  • Brown D, Craw I, Lewthwaite J (2001) A som based approach to skin detection with application in real time systems. In: Proceedings of the british machine vision conference. Citeseer, pp 491–500

  • Burdick HE (1997) Digital imaging: theory and applications. McGraw-Hill Inc, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Caetano TS, Olabarriaga SD, Barone DAC (2002) Performance evaluation of single and multiple-gaussian models for skin color modeling. In: Symposium on computer graphics and image. IEEE, pp 275–282

  • Cai J, Goshtasby A (1999) Detecting human faces in color images. Image Vis Comput 18:63–75

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carlsson A, Eriksson A, Isik M (2008) Automatic detection of images containing nudity. Master Thesis In intelligent systems design

  • Casati JPB, Moraes DR, Rodrigues ELL (2013) SFA: a human skin image database based on FERET and AR facial images. In: IX workshop de Visao computational. Rio de Janeiro

  • Chai D, Ngan KN (1999) Face segmentation using skin-color map in videophone applications. IEEE Trans Circ Syst Video Technol 9:551–564

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chai D, Phung SL, Bouzerdoum A (2001) Skin color detection for face localization in human-machine communications. In: Sixth international symposium on signal processing and its applications. IEEE, pp 343–346

  • Chai D, Phung S, Bouzerdoum A (2003) A Bayesian skin/non-skin color classifier using non-parametric density estimation. In: Proceedings of the international symposium on circuits and systems, vol 2. pp Ii-464–Ii-467

  • Chaichulee S, Villarroel M, Jorge J, Arteta C, Green G, Mccormick K, Zisserman A, Tarassenko L (2017) Multi-task convolutional neural network for patient detection and skin segmentation in continuous non-contact vital sign monitoring. In: 12th IEEE international conference on automatic face and gesture recognition (FG 2017)

  • Chauhan A, Farooqui Z (2016) An inventive approach for face detection with skin segmentation and multi-scale color restoration technique using genetic algorithm. Int J Res Comput Appl Robot 4(1):1–8

    Google Scholar 

  • Chaves-González JM, Vega-Rodríguez MA, Gómez-Pulido JA, Sánchez-Pérez JM (2010) Detecting skin in face recognition systems: a colour spaces study. Digit Signal Process 20:806–823

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen WC, Wang MS (2007) Region-based and content adaptive skin detection in color images. Int J Pattern Recognit Artif Intell 21:831

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen Q, Wu H, Yachida M (1995) Face detection by fuzzy pattern matching. In: Fifth international conference on computer vision. IEEE

  • Chen F-S, Fu C-M, Huang C-L (2003) Hand gesture recognition using a real-time tracking method and hidden Markov models. Image Vis Comput 21:745–758

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cheng HD, Jiang X, Sun Y, Wang J (2001) Color image segmentation: advances and prospects. Pattern Recognit 34:2259–2281

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Chin T (2008) Fuzzy skin detection. Thesis, Master of Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

  • Cho KM, Jang JH, Hong KS (2001) Adaptive skin-color filter. Pattern Recognit 34:1067–1073

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Dai Y, Nakano Y (1996) Face-texture model based on SGLD and its application in face detection in a color scene. Pattern Recognit 29:1007–1017

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Siqueira FR, Schwartz WR, Pedrini H (2013) Adaptive detection of human skin in color images. In: IX workshop de Visão Computacional (WVC). Rio de Janeiro-RJ, Brazil, pp 1–6

  • Do HC, You JY, Chien SI (2007) Skin color detection through estimation and conversion of illuminant color under various illuminations. IEEE Trans Consum Electron 53:1103–1108

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Duan L, Cui G, Gao W, Zhang H (2002) Adult image detection method base-on skin color model and support vector machine. In: The 5th Asian conference on computer vision. pp 797–800

  • Duda RO, Hart PE, Stork DG (2001) Pattern classification. Hoboken, Willey

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Dumitrescu CM, Dumitrache I (2016) Human skin detection using neural networks and block processing techniques. Univ Politeh Buchar Sci Bull Ser C Electr Eng Comput Sci 78:87–102

    Google Scholar 

  • Efford N (2000) Digital image processing: a practical introduction using Java. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Fernandez A, Ortega M, Cancela B, Penedo M (2012) Human body parts contextual and skin color region information for locating human body parts. J Comput Inf Technol 1(1):1–16

    Google Scholar 

  • Fleuret F, Geman D (2001) Coarse-to-fine face detection. Int J Comput Vis 41:85–107

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Frisch AS, Vrschaeb R, Olanoc A (2007) Fuzzy fusion for skin detection. Fuzzy Sets Syst 158:325–336

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Fu KS, Mui J (1981) A survey on image segmentation. Pattern Recognit 13:3–16

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Garcia C, Tziritas G (1999) Face detection using quantized skin color regions merging and wavelet packet analysis. IEEE Trans Multimed 1:264–277

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gasparini F, Schettini R (2006) Skin segmentation using multiple thresholding. In: Proceedings of international imaging VII. pp 128–135

  • Gejguš P, Šperka M (2003) Face tracking in color video sequences. In: Proceedings of The 19th spring conference on computer graphics. ACM, pp 245–249

  • Ghazali KHB, Ma J, Xiao R (2012) An innovative face detection based on YCgCR color space. Phys Proc 25:2116–2124

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gomez G, Sanchez M, Sucar LE (2002) On selecting colour components for skin detection. In: 16th international conference on pattern recognition, vol 2. pp 961–964

  • Gonzalez RC, Woods RE (2002) Digital image processing. Prentice Hall Press, Englewood Cliffs

    Google Scholar 

  • Gonzalez RC, Woods RE, Eddins SL (2007) Digital image processing using MATLAB. Prentice Hall Press, Englewood Cliffs

    Google Scholar 

  • Greenspan H, Goldberger J, Eshet I (2001) Mixture model for face-color modeling and segmentation. Pattern Recognit Lett 22:1525–1536

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Gupta A, Chaudhary A (2016) Robust skin segmentation using color space switching. Pattern Recognit Image Anal 26:61

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guru D, Sharath Y, Manjunath S (2010) Texture features and KNN in classification of flower images. IJCA Spec Issue RTIPPR 1:21–29

    Google Scholar 

  • Habili N, Lim CC, Moini A (2004) Segmentation of the face and hands in sign language video sequences using color and motion cues. IEEE Trans Circ Syst Video Technol 14:1086–1097

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hai-Bo L (2012) A kind of human face region detection and recognition method based on chrominance information characteristics. In: 2012 International conference on control engineering and communication technology (ICCECT). IEEE, pp 469–472

  • Hajraoui A, Sabri M (2014) Face detection algorithm based on skin detection, watershed method and gabor filters. Int J Comput Appl 94:33–39

    Google Scholar 

  • Han J, Awad G, Sutherland A (2009) Automatic skin segmentation and tracking in sign language recognition. Comput Vis IET 3:24–35

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hsieh C-C, Liou D-H, Lai W-R (2012) Enhanced face-based adaptive skin color model. 淡江理工學刊 15:167–176

    Google Scholar 

  • Hsu RL, Abdel-Mottaleb M, Jain AK (2002) Face detection in color images. IEEE Trans Pattern Anal Mach Intell 24:696–706

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hua L, Abderrahim E, Jaral F, Su R (2003) An improved image segmentation approach based on level set and mathematical morphology. In: Third international symposium on multispectral image processing and pattern recognition. pp 851–854

  • Huang L, Xia T, Zhang Y, Lin S (2011) Human skin detection in images By MSER analysis. In: 2011 18th IEEE international conference on image processing (ICIP). IEEE, pp 1257–1260

  • Jain AK (1989) Fundamentals of digital image processing. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Jalab HA, Omer HK (2015) Human computer interface using hand gesture recognition based on neural network. In: 2015 5th national symposium on information technology: towards new smart world (NSITNSW). IEEE, pp 1–6

  • Jebara T, Russell K, Pentland A (1998) Mixtures of eigenfeatures for real-time structure from texture. In: Sixth international conference on computer vision. IEEE, pp 128–135

  • Jiang Z, Yao M, Jiang W (2007) Skin detection using color, texture and space information. In: Fourth international conference on fuzzy systems and knowledge discovery, 2007. FSKD 2007. IEEE, pp 366–370

  • Jones MJ, Rehg JM (2002) Statistical color models with application to skin detection. Int J Comput Vis 46(1):81–96

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Juang CF, Shiu SJ (2008) Using self-organizing fuzzy network with support vector learning for face detection in color images. Neurocomputing 71:3409–3420

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kaabneh K (2014) Reliable skin detection using hybrid neural network model. Int J Adv Res Comput Commun Eng 3:5802–5805

    Google Scholar 

  • Kakumanu P, Makrogiannis S, Bourbakis N (2007) A survey of skin-color modeling and detection methods. Pattern Recognit 40:1106–1122

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Kawulok M, Kawulok J, Nalepa J (2014a) Spatial-based skin detection using discriminative skin-presence features. Pattern Recognit Lett 41:3–13

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kawulok M, Kawulok J, Nalepa J, Smolka B (2014b) Self-adaptive algorithm for segmenting skin regions. EURASIP J Adv Signal Process 2014:170

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Khan R, Hanbury A, Stöttinger J, Bais A (2012) Color based skin classification. Pattern Recognit Lett 33:157–163

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Khan R, Hanbury A, Sablatnig R, Stöttinger J, Khan FA, Khan FA (2014a) Systematic skin segmentation: merging spatial and non-spatial data. Multimed Tools Appl 69:717–741

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Khan R, Hanbury A, Stöttinger J, Khan FA, Khattak AU, Ali A (2014b) Multiple color space channel fusion for skin detection. Multimed Tools Appl 72:1709–1730

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kim M, Park J, Joo Y (2005) New fuzzy skin model for face detection. Adv Artif Intell 3809:557–566

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Kim C, You BJ, Jeong MH, Kim H (2008) Color segmentation robust to brightness variations by using B-spline curve modeling. Pattern Recognit 41:22–37

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Kim Y, Hwang I, Cho NI (2017) Convolutional neural networks and training strategies for skin detection. In: 2017 IEEE international conference on image processing (ICIP). IEEE, pp 3919–3923

  • Kovac J, Peer P, Solina F (2003) Human skin colour clustering for face detection. In: The IEEE region 8 Eurocon 2003 computer as a tool, vol 2. pp 144–148

  • Kumar C, Bindu A (2006) An efficient skin illumination compensation model for efficient face detection. In: 32nd annual conference on IEEE industrial electronics. pp 3444–3449

  • Lee JY, Yoo SI (2002) An elliptical boundary model for skin color detection. In: Proceedings of the international conference on imaging science, systems, and technology

  • Lee JS, Kuo YM, Chung PC, Chen EL (2007) Naked image detection based on adaptive and extensible skin color model. Pattern Recognit 40:2261–2270

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Li B, Xue X, Fan J (2007) A robust incremental learning framework for accurate skin region segmentation in color images. Pattern Recognit 40:3621–3632

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Liu Z, Yang J, Peng NS (2005) An efficient face segmentation algorithm based on binary partition tree. Signal Process Image Commun 20:295–314

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ma Z, Leijon A (2010) Human skin color detection in RGB space with bayesian estimation of beta mixture models. In: 18th European signal processing conference (EUSIPCO-2010), Aalborg, Denmark

  • Ma W-Y, Zhang H (1999) Content-based image indexing and retrieval. In: Handbook of Multimedia Computing. CRC Press, pp 227–254

  • Mahmoodi MR (2017) High performance novel skin segmentation algorithm for images with complex background. arXiv:1701.05588

  • Martinkauppi B (2002) Face colour under varying illumination-analysis and application. Oulu University Library, Finland. Ebook: http://Herkules.Oulu.Fi/Isbn9514267885/, ISBN: 951-42-6788-5

  • MATLAB (2010) Version 7.11.0.584 (R2010b)

  • Mckenna SJ, Gong S, Raja Y (1998) Modelling facial colour and identity with Gaussian mixtures. Pattern Recognit 31:1883–1892

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Medeiros R, Scharcanski J, Wong A (2013) Multi-scale stochastic color texture models for skin region segmentation and gesture detection. In: 2013 IEEE international conference on multimedia and expo workshops (ICMEW). IEEE, pp 1–4

  • Menser B, Wien M (2000) Segmentation and tracking of facial regions iIn color image sequences. In: Visual communications and image processing 2000. Perth, Australia, p 731

  • Moallem P, Mousavi BS, Monadjemi SA (2011) A novel fuzzy rule base system for pose independent faces detection. Appl Soft Comput 11:1801–1810

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moradi B, Ezoji M (2015) Skin detection based on contextual information. In: 2015 2nd international conference on pattern recognition and image analysis (IPRIA). IEEE, pp 1–6

  • Nadian-Ghomsheh A (2016) Pixel-based skin detection based on statistical models. J Telecommun Electron Comput Eng JTEC 8:7–14

    Google Scholar 

  • Naji SA (2013) Human face detection from colour images based on multi-skin models, rule-based geometrical knowledge, and artificial neural network. Ph.D. Thesis, University Of Malaya, Malaysia

  • Naji S, Zainuddin R, Jalab H (2012) Skin segmentation based on multi pixel color clustering models. Digit Signal Process 22(2012):933–940

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oliver N, Pentland AP, Berard F (2000) LAFTER: A real-time face and lips tracker with facial expression recognition. Pattern Recognit 33:1369–1382

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Osman MZ, Maarof MA, Rohani MF (2016) Towards integrating statistical color features for human skin detection. World Acad Sci Eng Technol Int J Comput Electr Autom Control Inf Eng 10:317–321

    Google Scholar 

  • Pai Y-T, Lee L-T, Ruan S-J, Chen Y-H, Mohanty S, Kougianos E (2010) Honeycomb model based skin colour detector for face detection. Int J Comput Appl Technol 39:93–100

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peer P, Solina F (1999) An automatic human face detection method. In: Proceedings of computer vision winter workshop. pp 122–130

  • Perez M, Avila S, Moreira D, Moraes D, Testoni V, Valle E, Goldenstein S, Rocha A (2017) Video pornography detection through deep learning techniques and motion information. Neurocomputing 230:279–293

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Phung SL, Chai D, Bouzerdoum A (2001) A universal and robust human skin color model using neural networks. In: International joint conference on neural networks, IJCNN 2001. Washington, DC. IEEE, pp 2844–2849

  • Phung SL, Bouzerdoum A, Chai D (2003) Skin segmentation using color and edge information. In: Seventh international symposium on signal processing and its applications, 2003. IEEE, Paris, France, pp 525–528

  • Phung SL, Bouzerdoum A, Chai D (2005) Skin segmentation using color pixel classification: analysis and comparison. IEEE Trans Pattern Anal Mach Intell 27(1):148–154

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pujol FA, Pujol M, Jimeno-Morenilla A, Pujol MJ (2017) Face detection based on skin color segmentation using fuzzy entropy. Entropy 19:26

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rahman MA, Purnama IKE, Purnomo MH (2014) Simple method of human skin detection using HSV and YCbCr color spaces. In: 2014 IEEE international conference on intelligent autonomous agents, networks and systems (INAGENTSYS). IEEE, pp 58–61

  • Rautaray SS, Agrawal A (2015) Vision based hand gesture recognition for human computer interaction: a survey. Artif Intell Rev 43:1–54

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Razmjooy N, Mousavi BS, Soleymani F (2013) A hybrid neural network imperialist competitive algorithm for skin color segmentation. Math Comput Model 57:848–856

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Roheda S (2017) A multi-scale approach to skin pixel detection. Electron Imaging 2017:18–23

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Roth PM, Winter M (2008) Survey of appearance-based methods for object recognition. In: Inst. for computer graphics and vision, Graz University of Technology, Austria, technical report ICGTR0108 (ICG-TR-01/08)

  • Rowley HA, Jing Y, Baluja S (2006) Large scale image-based adult-content filtering. In: International conference on computer vision theory and applications 2006 Setúbal, Portugal, Citeseer

  • Ruijsscher B (2006) FPGA based accelerator for real-time skin segmentation, vol 4. Msc. Thesis, Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg

  • Russ JC (2007) The image processing handbook. CRC Press, Boca Raton

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Sandeep K, Rajagopalan A (2002) Human face detection in cluttered color images using skin color and edge information. In: Indian conference on computer vision, graphics and image processing, 2002 ICVGIP 2002, Ahmadabad, India

  • Santos A, Pedrini H (2015) Improvements on human skin segmentation in digital images. M.Sc. Dissertation, Institute of Computing, University of Campinas, Brazil

  • Santos A, Paiva J, Toledo C, Pedrini H (2016) Improved human skin segmentation using fuzzy fusion based on optimized thresholds by genetic algorithms. In: Hybrid soft computing for image segmentation. Springer

  • Schmugge SJ, Jayaram S, Shin MC, Tsap LV (2007) Objective evaluation of approaches of skin detection using ROC analysis. Comput Vis Image Underst 108:41–51

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sebe N, Cohen I, Huang TS, Gevers T (2004) Skin detection: a bayesian network approach. In: Proceedings of the 17th international conference on pattern recognition. IEEE, Cambridge, UK, pp 903–906

  • Seow MJ, Valaparla D, Asari VK (2003) Neural network based skin color model for face detection. In: Proceedings of the 32nd applied imagery pattern recognition workshop (AIPR’03), Washington, DC, USA. IEEE, pp 141–145

  • Sevimli H, Esen E, Ateş TK, Ozan EC, Tekin M, Loğoğlu KB, Sevinç AM, Saracoğlu A, Yazıcı A, Alatan AA (2010) Adult image content classification using global features and skin region detection. In: Proceedings of the 25th international symposium on computer and information sciences. London, UK, pp 253–258

  • Shaik KB, Ganesan P, Kalist V, Sathish B, Jenitha JMM (2015) Comparative study of skin color detection and segmentation in HSV and YCbCR color space. Proc Comput Sci 57:41–48

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shapiro LG, Stockman G (2001) Computer vision. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs

    Google Scholar 

  • Shih FY, Cheng S, Chuang CF, Wang PSP (2008) Extracting faces and facial features from color images. Int J Pattern Recognit Artif Intell 22:515–534

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shin MC, Chang KI, Tsap LV (2002) Does colorspace transformation make any difference on skin detection? In: Sixth IEEE workshop on applications of computer vision (WACV 2002). IEEE, Orlando, Flordia, USA, pp 275–279

  • Siddiqui KTA, Wasif A (2015) Skin detection of animation characters. arXiv:1503.06275

  • Sigal L, Sclaroff S, Athitsos V (2000) Estimation and prediction of evolving color distributions for skin segmentation under varying illumination. In: Proceedings IEEE conference on computer vision and pattern recognition 2000, vol 2. IEEE, Hilton Head, SC, USA. pp 152–159

  • Sigal L, Sclaroff S, Athitsos V (2004) Skin color-based video segmentation under time-varying illumination. IEEE Trans Pattern Anal Mach Intell 26:862–877

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sobottka K, Pitas I (1998) A novel method for automatic face segmentation, facial feature extraction and tracking. Signal Process Image Commun 12:263–281

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Solina F, Peer P, Batagelj B, Juvan S (2002) 15 seconds of fame-an interactive, computer-vision based art installation. In: 7th international conference on control, automation, robotics and vision, ICARCV 2002. IEEE, Singapore, pp 198–204

  • Sonka M, Hlavac V, Boyle R (2008) Image processing, analysis, and machine vision. Thomson Corporation, Stamford

    Google Scholar 

  • Soriano M, Martinkauppi B, Huovinen S, Laaksonen M (2003) Adaptive skin color modeling using the skin locus for selecting training pixels. Pattern Recognit 36:681–690

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Srisuk S, Kurutach W, Limpitikeat K (2001) A novel approach for robust, fast and accurate face detection. Int J Uncertain Fuzziness Knowl Based Syst 9:769–779

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Storring M (2004) Computer vision and human skin colour. Ph.D. Thesis, Aalborg University, Denmark

  • Storring M, Kocka T, Andersen HJ, And Granum E (2003) Tracking regions of human skin through illumination changes. Pattern Recognit Lett 24(11):1715–1723

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sun H-M (2010) Skin detection for single images using dynamic skin color modeling. Pattern Recognit 43:1413–1420

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tan W, Chan C, Yogarajah P, Condell J (2012) A fusion approach for efficient human skin detection. In: IEEE transactions on industrial informatics. pp 1–1

  • Tao L (2014) An FPGA-based parallel architecture for face detection using mixed color models. arXiv:1405.7032

  • Taqa AY, Hamid J (2010) Increasing the reliability of fuzzy inference system-based skin detector. Am J Appl Sci 7:1129–1138

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taqa AY, Jalab H (2010) Increasing the reliability of skin detectors. Sci Res Essays 5:2480–2490

    Google Scholar 

  • Terrillon JC, Shirazi MN, Fukamachi H, Akamatsu S (2000) Comparative performance of different skin chrominance models and chrominance spaces for the automatic detection of human faces in color images. In: Fourth IEEE international conference on automatic face and gesture recognition, 2000. IEEE, Grenoble, France, pp 54–61

  • Thakur S, Paul S, Mondal A, Das S, Abraham A (2011) Face detection using skin tone segmentation. In: 2011 world congress on information and communication technologies (WICT). IEEE, pp 53–60

  • Tomaz F, Candeias T, Shahbazkia H (2004) Fast and accurate skin segmentation in color images. In: First Canadian conference on computer and robot vision. IEEE, London, UK, Ontario, Canada, pp 180–187

  • Tsekeridou S, Pitas I (1998) Facial feature extraction in frontal views using biometric analogies. In: European association for signal processing EUSIPCO-98. Island of Rhodes, Greece, pp 315–318

  • Unnikrishnan R, Pantofaru C, Hebert M (2007) Toward objective evaluation of image segmentation algorithms. IEEE Trans Pattern Anal Mach Intell 29:929–944

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vadakkepat P, Lim P, De Silva LC, Jing L, Ling LL (2008) Multimodal approach to human-face detection and tracking. IEEE Trans Ind Electron 55:1385–1393

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Varma SL, Behera V (2017) Human skin detection using histogram processing and gaussian mixture model based on color spaces. In: 2017 international conference on intelligent sustainable systems (ICISS). IEEE, pp 116–120

  • Verma A, Raj SA, Midya A, Chakraborty J (2014) Face detection using skin color modeling and geometric feature. In: 2014 International conference on informatics, electronics and vision (ICIEV). IEEE, pp 1–6

  • Vezhnevets V, Sazonov V, Andreeva A (2003) A survey on pixel-based skin color detection techniques. Graphicon 3:85–92

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang Y, Yuan B (2001) A novel approach for human face detection from color images under complex background. Pattern Recognit 34:1983–1992

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Wei G, Sethi IK (2000) Omni-face detection for video/image content description. In: The ACM workshops on multimedia. ACM, Los Angeles, CA, USA, pp 185–189

  • Xiaohua L, Lam KM, Lansun S, Jiliu Z (2009) Face detection using simplified gabor features and hierarchical regions in a cascade of classifiers. Pattern Recognit Lett 30:717–728

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yang MH (2000) Hand gesture recognition and face detection in images. Ph.D. Thesis, University Of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois

  • Yang MH, Ahuja N (1998) Detecting human faces in color images. In: IEEE international conference on image processing (ICIP-98). IEEE, Chicago, Illinois, USA, pp 127–130

  • Yang HM, Kriegman DJ, Ahuja N (2002) Detecting faces in images: a survey. IEEE Trans On Pattern Anal Mach Intell 24:34–58

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yoo T-W, Oh I-S (1999) A fast algorithm for tracking human faces based on chromatic histograms. Pattern Recognit Lett 20:967–978

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yuetao D, Nana Y (2011) Research of face detection in color image based on skin color. Energy Proc 13:9395–9401

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yusuf AA, Mohamad FS, Sufyanu Z (2017) Human face detection using skin color segmentation and watershed algorithm. Am J Artif Intell 1:29–35

    Google Scholar 

  • Zafarifar B, Van Den Kerkhof T, De With PH (2012) Texture-adaptive skin detection for TV and its real-time implementation on DSP and FPGA. IEEE Trans Consum Electron 58:161–169

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zainuddin R, Naji S, Al-Jaafar J (2010) Suppressing false negatives in skin segmentation. In: Kim T, Lee Y, Knag B, Slezak D (eds) Lecture notes in computer science LNCS, vol 6485. Springer, Berlin, pp 136–144

    Google Scholar 

  • Zaqout I, Zainuddin R, Baba S (2004) Human face detection in color images. Adv Complex Syst 7:369–383

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zarit BD, Super BJ, Quek FKH (1999) Comparison of five color models in skin pixel classification. In: International workshop on recognition, analysis, and tracking of faces and gestures in real-time systems ICCV ‘99. IEEE, sfdssf, Corfu, Greece, pp 58–63

  • Zhu Q, Wu C-T, Cheng K-T, Wu Y-L (2004) An adaptive skin model and its application to objectionable image filtering. In: Proceedings of the 12th annual ACM international conference on multimedia. ACM, pp 56–63

  • Zuo H, Fan H, Blasch E, Ling H (2017) Combining convolutional and recurrent neural networks for human skin detection. IEEE Signal Process Lett 24:289–293

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Prof. Dr. Roziati Zaiuddin for her role as one of Sinan Naji’s Ph.D. supervisor and to the anonymous reviewers whose comments helped improve and clarify this manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Business Informatics, University of Information Technology and Communications, Baghdad, Iraq

    Sinan Naji

  2. Faculty of Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

    Hamid A. Jalab & Sameem A. Kareem

Authors
  1. Sinan Naji
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Hamid A. Jalab
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Sameem A. Kareem
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hamid A. Jalab.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this article.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Naji, S., Jalab, H.A. & Kareem, S.A. A survey on skin detection in colored images. Artif Intell Rev 52, 1041–1087 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-018-9664-9

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-018-9664-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation