An algorithm for real time eye detection in face images

The problem of eye detection in face images is very important for a large number of applications ranging from face recognition to gaze tracking. In this paper we propose a new algorithm for eyes detection that uses iris geometrical information for determining in the whole image the region candidate to contain an eye, and then the symmetry for selecting the couple of eyes. The novelty of this work is that the algorithm works on complex images without constraints on the background, skin color segmentation and so on. Different experiments, carried out on images of subjects with different eyes colors, some of them wearing glasses, demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed algorithm.