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.