脸部特征定位是人脸分析技术的一个重要组成部分，其目标是在图象或图象序列中的指定区域内搜索人脸特征(如眼、鼻、嘴、耳等)的位置．它可广泛应用于人脸检测和定位、人脸识别、姿态识别、表情识别、头部像压缩及重构、脸部动画等领域．近年来，该领域的研究有了较大的发展，为了让相关领域内的理论研究和开发人员对目前的进展有一个全面的了解，将近年来提出的脸部特征定位方法根据其所依据的基本信息类型，分为基于先验知识、几何形状、色彩、外观和关联信息等5类，分别作了介绍，同时，对各类方法的性能作了一些比较和讨论，对未来的发展作了展望．

Facial features localization, an important technique in human face analyzing, is specialized in searching for facial features (eyes, nose, mouth, ears, etc) within a given region in an image or image sequence. It finds applications in various areas, such as face detection, face recognition, gesture recognition, expression recognition, face image compression and reconstruction, face cartoon, etc. This paper attempts to give an overview of the latest development in this field by classifying the newly proposed methods into five categories, namely the ones based on knowledge, geometry information, color, appearance and relative location. All these methods appeared in related papers or works published on international, as well as Chinese, journals and conferences in recent years. Then their performances in accurate rate, robustness and computational expense are roughly estimated and compared while some discussions about the criteria on which the estimation and comparison bases are provided. At the end of this paper, a prospect of the future development in this field is presented based on the observation of how an effective face feature location system should be build.