On KANSEI facial image processing for computerized facial caricaturing system PICASSO

The PICASSO system for facial caricaturing is a typical KANSEI vision system in the following senses: it can process 2D, 3D and motion facial images to generate a facial sketch of line drawings; it can extract individuality features by introducing a "mean face" for enforcing the visual KANSEI impressions by which the face looks more likely to be so; and it can evaluate the generated facial caricature to be moderate for the individual visual KANSEI characteristics, based on the model of visual illusion. Image processing methods for generating a facial sketch based on the Hough transform are presented. Principles to generate a facial caricature and to evaluate the generated works are explained precisely, together with demonstrations of experimental results. In order to equip the PICASSO system for the feedback loop from the observer, we have introduced the eye camera system. This equipment is expected to provide a new method to extract the simultaneous individual eye-mark patterns which show where in the face the observer is watching. These preliminary experiments are also presented to show the possibility to extract more tightly individual KANSEI visual information.