Tracking facial feature points with Gabor wavelets and shape models

A feature-based approach to tracking rigid and non-rigid facial motion is described. Feature points are characterised using Gabor wavelets and can be individually tracked by phase-based displacement estimation. In order to achieve robust tracking a flexible shape model is used to impose global constraints upon the local feature points and to constrain the tracker. While there are many applications in facial analysis, the approach can be used for tracking other textured objects.