Detecting mouth with openCV

Question

I am trying to detect the mouth in an image with openCV, so I am using the following code:

#include "face_detection.h"

using namespace cv;

// Function detectAndDisplay
void detectAndDisplay(const std::string& file_name, cv::CascadeClassifier& face_cascade, cv::CascadeClassifier& mouth_cascade)
{
    Mat frame = imread(file_name);
    std::vector<Rect> faces;
    Mat frame_gray;
    Mat crop;
    Mat res;
    Mat gray;

    cvtColor(frame, frame_gray, COLOR_BGR2GRAY);
    equalizeHist(frame_gray, frame_gray);

    // Detect faces
    face_cascade.detectMultiScale(frame_gray, faces, 1.1, 3, 0 | CASCADE_SCALE_IMAGE, Size(30, 30));

    for(unsigned int i=0;i<faces.size();i++)
    {
        rectangle(frame,faces[i],Scalar(255,0,0),1,8,0);
        Mat face  = frame(faces[i]);
        cvtColor(face,face,CV_BGR2GRAY);
        std::vector <Rect> mouthi;
        mouth_cascade.detectMultiScale(face, mouthi);
        for(unsigned int k=0;k<mouthi.size();k++)
        {
        Point pt1(mouthi[k].x+faces[i].x , mouthi[k].y+faces[i].y);
        Point pt2(pt1.x+mouthi[k].width, pt1.y+mouthi[k].height);
        rectangle(frame, pt1,pt2,Scalar(0,255,0),1,8,0);
        }

    }

    imshow("Frame", frame);
    waitKey(33);
}

The classifiers are haarcascade_frontalface_alt.xml and haarcascade_mcs_mouth.xml.

The face is detected correctly but the mouth is not: I also obtain the eyes and some other parts, like the forehead. Is there a way to detect only the mouth?

Answer 1

I think I managed to solve the problem: focusing on the lower half of the face and increasing the scale factor did the trick and now I am able to detect the mouth with a good precision. Anyway this task seems much more complicated than face detection, even if I am using "simple" images, which means straight and full frontal.

Here are two examples: a success and a failure.