Entropy-based feature selection for improved 3D facial expression recognition

Facial expressions contain most of the information on human face which is essential for human–computer interaction. Development of robust algorithms for automatic recognition of facial expressions with high recognition rates has been a challenge for the last 10 years. In this paper, we propose a novel feature selection procedure which recognizes basic facial expressions with high recognition rates by utilizing three-Dimensional (3D) geometrical facial feature positions. The paper presents a system of classifying expressions in one of the six basic emotional categories which are anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. The paper contributes on feature selections for each expression independently and achieves high recognition rates with the proposed geometric facial features selected for each expression. The novel feature selection procedure is entropy based, and it is employed independently for each of the six basic expressions. The system’s performance is evaluated using the 3D facial expression database, BU-3DFE. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the latest methods reported in the literature.