Representation of facial features by Catmull-Rom splines

This paper describes a technique for the representation of the 2D frontal view of faces, based on Catmull-Rom splines. It takes advantage of the a priori knowledge about the face structure and of the proprieties of Catmull-Rom splines, like interpolation, smoothness and local control, in order to define a set of key points that correspond among different faces. Moreover, it can compactly describe the whole face even if the face features have not been completely localized. The proposed model has been tested in practical contexts of face analysis and promising qualitative results are included to illustrate its versatility and accuracy.