Facial Image Processing

Call for Papers

Facial image processing is an area of research dedicated to the extraction and analysis of information about human faces; information which is known to play a central role in social interactions including recognition, emotion, and intention. Over the last decade, it has become a very active research field that deals with face detection and tracking, facial feature detection, face recognition, facial expression and emotion recognition, face coding, and virtual face synthesis.

With the introduction of new powerful machine learning techniques, statistical classification methods, and complex deformable models, recent progresses have made possible a large number of applications in areas such as model-based video coding, image retrieval, surveillance and biometrics, visual speech understanding, virtual characters for e-learning, online marketing or entertainment, intelligent human-computer interaction, and others.

However, lots of progress is yet to be made to provide more robust systems, especially when dealing with pose and illumination changes in complex natural scenes. If most approaches focus naturally on processing from still images, emerging techniques may also consider different inputs. For instance, video is becoming ubiquitous and very affordable, and there is growing demand for vision-based human-oriented applications, ranging from security to human-computer interaction and video annotation.

Taking into account temporal information and the dynamics of faces may also ease applications like, for instance, facial expression and face recognition which are still very challenging tasks.

Capturing 3D data may as well become very affordable and processing such data can lead to enhanced systems, more robust to illumination effects and where discriminant information may be more easily retrieved.

The goal of this special issue is to provide original contributions in the field of facial image processing.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

Authors should follow the EURASIP JIVP manuscript format described at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ivp/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscripts through the EURASIP JIVP manuscript tracking system at http://www.hindawi.com/mts/, according to the following timetable:

Manuscript Due	May 1, 2006
First Round of Reviews	August 1, 2006
Publication Date	November 1, 2006

Guest Editors:

• Christophe Garcia, Image, Rich Media and Hyperlanguages Laboratory,France Telecom Division R&D, Rennes, France
• Jörn Ostermann, Institut für Informationsverarbeitung,Universität Hannover, 30167 Hannover, Germany
• Tim Cootes, Division of Imaging Science and Biomedical Engineering, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK