Face detection in Windows Phone 7

I was recently searching for face detection libraries which would work with Windows Phone 7. Browsing CodePlex, I landed on Facelight, a simple face recognition method written in Silverlight by René Schulte. Facelight is open-source (thanks, René), so it was a trivial task to port it to Windows Phone. I made almost no changes in its initial code; to be honest, I only added an intermediate class in order to separate the pure face detection code from the user interface.

I developed an application demonstrating its use. You are free to download and have fun with it. Source code is included, too. Here is the result of Windows Phone face detector:

Using Facelight is a piece of cake. You only need two XAML image controls placed in the same position. The upper one (named ImgResult) will contain a red ellipse specifying the recognized face and the other one (named ImgOverlay) will contain the original bitmap source. Using the adapter I created for Facelight, you can write the following:

   1. FaceDetector faceDetector = new FaceDetector();  
   2.   
   3. BitmapImage bmpImage = new BitmapImage();  
   4. bmpImage.SetSource(someStream);  
   5.   
   6. ImgOverlay.Source = bmpImage;  
   7. ImgResult.Source = faceDetector.Process(new WriteableBitmap(bmpImage));

The application I developed lets you select a saved photograph right from your device! Be sure to have your Phone disconnected from the PC before trying it out.

Note: Facelight recognizes up to one face per picture. It is actually a skin detector you can utilize in your applications.

Download demo. Includes:

• FaceLight Silverlight class library (originally ported from René Schulte FaceLight project). Licensed as described in CodePlex.
• FaceLight Phone demo.
• Photoshop files (Windows Phone icon and tile). 

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)