Detecting Objectionable Images Using a New Skin Detection Method

Abstract

SUMMARYIn this paper, a new skin detection method using pixel color and image regional information, intended for objectionable image filtering is proposed. The method consists of three stages: skin detection, feature extraction and image classification. Skin detection is implemented in two steps. First, a Sinc function, fitted to skin color distribution in the Cb-Cr chrominance plane is used for detecting pixels with skin color properties. Next, to benefit regional information, based on the theory of color image reproduction, it's shown that the scattering of skin pixels in the RGB color space can be approximated by an exponential function. This function is incorporated to extract the final accurate skin map of the image. As objectionable image features, new shape and direction features, along with area feature are extracted. Finally, a Multi-Layer Perceptron trained with the best set of input features is used for filtering images. Experimental results on a dataset of 1600 images illustrate that the regional method improves the pixel-based skin detection rate by 10%. The final classification result with 94.12% accuracy showed better results when compared to other methods.