Abstract

Accurate tracking of facial tissue in thermal infrared imaging is challenging because it is affected not only by positional but also physiological (functional) changes. This paper presents a particle filter tracker driven by a probabilistic template function with both spatial and temporal smoothing components, which is capable of adapting to abrupt positional and physiological changes. The method was tested on tracking facial regions of subjects under varying physiological and environmental conditions in 25 thermal clips. It demonstrated robustness and accuracy, outperforming other strategies. This new method promises improved performance in a number of biomedical applications that involve physiological measurements on the face, such as unobtrusive sleep and stress studies. © 1964-2012 IEEE.

Department(s)

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering

Keywords and Phrases

Facial tracking; matte; sleep studies; stress studies; thermal imaging

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

1558-2531; 0018-9294

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2025 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 May 2013

PubMed ID

23247840

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