Automatic facial analysis for objective assessment of facial paralysis

Soraghan, J.J. and O'Reilly, Brian and He, Shu and McGrenary, Stewart (2009) Automatic facial analysis for objective assessment of facial paralysis. In: 1st International Conferfence on Computer Science from Algorithms to Applications (CSAA-2009), 2009-01-08 - 2009-01-10.

[thumbnail of strathprints026291.pdf]
Preview
PDF. Filename: strathprints026291.pdf
Download (2MB)| Preview

Abstract

Facial Paralysis is a condition causing decreased movement on one side of the face. A quantitative, objective and reliable assessment system would be an invaluable tool for clinicians treating patients with this condition. This paper presents an approach based on the automatic analysis of patient video data. Facial feature localization and facial movement detection methods are discussed. An algorithm is presented to process the optical flow data to obtain the motion features in the relevant facial regions. Three classification methods are applied to provide quantitative evaluations of regional facial nerve function and the overall facial nerve function based on the House-Brackmann Scale. Experiments show the Radial Basis Function (RBF) Neural Network to have superior performance.