{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,23]],"date-time":"2026-09-23T08:50:07Z","timestamp":1790153407592,"version":"4.0.1"},"reference-count":53,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2017,1,11]],"date-time":"2017-01-11T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1484092800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (Spain)","award":["TIN2013-40982-R"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["TIN2013-40982-R"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Entropy"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Face detection is the first step of any automated face recognition system. One of the most popular approaches to detect faces in color images is using a skin color segmentation scheme, which in many cases needs a proper representation of color spaces to interpret image information. In this paper, we propose a fuzzy system for detecting skin in color images, so that each color tone is assumed to be a fuzzy set. The Red, Green, and Blue (RGB), the Hue, Saturation and Value (HSV), and the YCbCr (where Y is the luminance and Cb,Cr are the chroma components) color systems are used for the development of our fuzzy design. Thus, a fuzzy three-partition entropy approach is used to calculate all of the parameters needed for the fuzzy systems, and then, a face detection method is also developed to validate the segmentation results. The results of the experiments show a correct skin detection rate between 94% and 96% for our fuzzy segmentation methods, with a false positive rate of about 0.5% in all cases. Furthermore, the average correct face detection rate is above 93%, and even when working with heterogeneous backgrounds and different light conditions, it achieves almost 88% correct detections. Thus, our method leads to accurate face detection results with low false positive and false negative rates.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/e19010026","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2017,1,11]],"date-time":"2017-01-11T10:36:49Z","timestamp":1484131009000},"page":"26","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":25,"title":["Face Detection Based on Skin Color Segmentation Using Fuzzy Entropy"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"19","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6503-2076","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Francisco","family":"Pujol","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Technology, University of Alicante, Alicante 03690, Spain"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Mar","family":"Pujol","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Alicante, Alicante 03690, Spain"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3789-6475","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Antonio","family":"Jimeno-Morenilla","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Technology, University of Alicante, Alicante 03690, Spain"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Mar\u00eda","family":"Pujol","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Alicante, Alicante 03690, Spain"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,1,11]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"236","DOI":"10.1006\/cviu.2001.0921","article-title":"Face Detection: A Survey","volume":"83","author":"Low","year":"2001","journal-title":"Comput. Vis. Image Underst."},{"key":"ref_2","first-page":"85","article-title":"A Survey on Pixel-Based Skin Color Detection Techniques","volume":"3","author":"Vezhnevets","year":"2003","journal-title":"Proc. Graphicon"},{"key":"ref_3","unstructured":"Zhang, C., and Zhang, Z. (2010). A Survey of Recent Advances in Face Detection, Microsoft Research. Technical Report."},{"key":"ref_4","first-page":"122","article-title":"Optimum color spaces for skin detection","volume":"1","author":"Albiol","year":"2001","journal-title":"ICIP"},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"34","DOI":"10.1109\/34.982883","article-title":"Detecting faces in images: A survey","volume":"24","author":"Yang","year":"2002","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1106","DOI":"10.1016\/j.patcog.2006.06.010","article-title":"A survey of skin-color modeling and detection methods","volume":"40","author":"Kakumanu","year":"2007","journal-title":"Pattern Recogn."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"157","DOI":"10.1016\/j.patrec.2011.09.032","article-title":"Color based skin classification","volume":"33","author":"Khan","year":"2012","journal-title":"Pattern Recogn. Lett."},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1413","DOI":"10.1016\/j.patcog.2009.09.022","article-title":"Skin detection for single images using dynamic skin color modeling","volume":"43","author":"Sun","year":"2010","journal-title":"Pattern Recogn."},{"key":"ref_9","first-page":"1","article-title":"Blocking Adult Images Based on Statistical Skin Detection","volume":"4","author":"Zheng","year":"2004","journal-title":"Electron. Lett. Comput. Vis. Image Anal."},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Kelly, W., Donnellan, A., and Molloy, D. (2008, January 3\u20135). Screening for Objectionable Images: A Review of Skin Detection Techniques. Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference Machine Vision and Image Processing, Coleraine, Ireland.","DOI":"10.1109\/IMVIP.2008.21"},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"335","DOI":"10.1002\/col.20636","article-title":"Skin-color correction method based on hue template mapping for wide color gamut liquid crystal display devices","volume":"36","author":"Chen","year":"2011","journal-title":"Color Res. Appl."},{"key":"ref_12","unstructured":"Tomaz, F., Candeias, T., and Shahbazkia, H. (2003, January 10\u201312). Improved Automatic Skin Detection in Color Images. Proceedings of the VIIth Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications, Sydeny, Australia."},{"key":"ref_13","first-page":"172","article-title":"Fusion of Multi Color Space for Human Skin RegionSegmentation","volume":"3","author":"Xiang","year":"2013","journal-title":"Int. J. Inf. Electron. Eng."},{"key":"ref_14","unstructured":"Brand, J., Mason, J.S., Roach, M., and Pawlewski, M. (2001, January 4). Enhancing face detection in color images using a skin probability map. Proceedings of the 2001 International Symposium on Intelligent Multimedia, Video and Speech Processing, Hong Kong, China."},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"287","DOI":"10.14257\/ijmue.2015.10.8.29","article-title":"A Real-Time Hand Detection System during Hand over Face Occlusion","volume":"10","author":"Xu","year":"2015","journal-title":"Int. J. Mult. Ubiquitous Eng."},{"key":"ref_16","unstructured":"Liu, Q., and Peng, G.Z. (2010, January 6\u20137). A robust skin color based face detection algorithm. Proceedings of the 2010 International Asia Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics, Wuhan, China."},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"197","DOI":"10.1007\/s12204-012-1252-6","article-title":"Skin detection method based on cascaded AdaBoost classifier","volume":"17","author":"Huang","year":"2012","journal-title":"J. Shanghai Jiaotong Univ."},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2160","DOI":"10.1109\/TPAMI.2011.63","article-title":"Bayesian Estimation of Beta Mixture Models with Variational Inference","volume":"33","author":"Ma","year":"2011","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell."},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Shirali-Shahreza, S., and Mousavi, M.E. (2008, January 18\u201320). A New Bayesian Classifier for Skin Detection. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Innovative Computing Information and Control, Dalian, China.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICICIC.2008.54"},{"key":"ref_20","unstructured":"Hwang, C.L., and Lu, K.D. (2011). Advances in Computational Intelligence, Springer."},{"key":"ref_21","unstructured":"Phung, S.L., Chai, D., and Bouzerdoum, A. (2001, January 15\u201319). A universal and robust human skin color model using neural networks. Proceedings of the 2001 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, Washington, DC, USA."},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Wimmer, M., Radig, B., and Beetz, M. (2006, January 20\u201324). A Person and Context Specific Approach for Skin Color Classification. Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Hong Kong, China.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICPR.2006.151"},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Yang, M.H., and Ahuja, N. (1999, January 26\u201329). Gaussian mixture model for human skin color and its applications in image and video databases. Proceedings of the Storage and Retrieval for Image and Video Databases VII, San Jose, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1117\/12.333865"},{"key":"ref_24","unstructured":"Yang, J., Fu, Z., Tan, T., and Hu, W. (2004, January 23\u201326). Skin color detection using multiple cues. Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Cambridge, UK."},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2582","DOI":"10.1109\/TIP.2011.2121080","article-title":"A Bayesian Network Model for Automatic and Interactive Image Segmentation","volume":"20","author":"Zhang","year":"2011","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Image Process."},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"338","DOI":"10.1016\/S0019-9958(65)90241-X","article-title":"Fuzzy sets","volume":"8","author":"Zadeh","year":"1965","journal-title":"Inf. Control"},{"key":"ref_27","first-page":"60","article-title":"Active Facial Tracking","volume":"1","author":"Kale","year":"2013","journal-title":"Asian J. Comput. Sci. Inf. Technol."},{"key":"ref_28","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Boaventura, I.A.G., Volpe, V.M., Silva, I.N.D., and Gonzaga, A. (2006, January 8\u201311). Fuzzy Classification of Human Skin Color in Color Images. Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Taipei, Taiwan.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICSMC.2006.385112"},{"key":"ref_29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Selamat, A., Maarof, M.A., and Chin, T.Y. (2009, January 12\u201314). Fuzzy Mamdani Inference System Skin Detection. Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Hybrid Intelligent Systems, Shenyang, China.","DOI":"10.1109\/HIS.2009.224"},{"key":"ref_30","unstructured":"Kovac, J., Peer, P., and Solina, F. (2003, January 22\u201324). Human skin color clustering for face detection. Proceddings of the IEEE Region 8, Eurocon 2003. Computer as a Tool, Ljubljana, Slovenia."},{"key":"ref_31","unstructured":"Truck, I., Akdag, H., and Borgi, A. (2001, January 5\u20137). A symbolic approach for colorimetric alterations. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference in Fuzzy Logic and Technology, Leicester, UK."},{"key":"ref_32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"227","DOI":"10.1109\/3477.915345","article-title":"A model based on linguistic 2-tuples for dealing with multigranular hierarchical linguistic contexts in multi-expert decision-making","volume":"31","author":"Herrera","year":"2001","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern."},{"key":"ref_33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Bhatia, A., Srivastava, S., and Agarwal, A. (2010, January 19\u201321). Face Detection Using Fuzzy Logic and Skin Color Segmentation in Images. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Emerging Trends in Engineering and Technology, Goa, India.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICETET.2010.20"},{"key":"ref_34","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Hmid, M.B., and Jemaa, Y.B. (2006, January 10\u201313). Fuzzy classification, image segmentation and shape analysis for Human face detection. Proceedings of the 8th international Conference on Signal Processing, Nice, France.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICOSP.2006.345953"},{"key":"ref_35","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"35","DOI":"10.5815\/ijigsp.2012.04.05","article-title":"Skin color segmentation in YCBCR color space with adaptive fuzzy neural network (Anfis)","volume":"4","author":"Iraji","year":"2012","journal-title":"Int. J. Image Graph. Signal Process."},{"key":"ref_36","unstructured":"Messer, K., Matas, J., Kittler, J., Luettin, J., and Maitre, G. (1999, January 22\u201324). XM2VTSDB: The extended M2VTS database. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Audio and Video-Based Biometric Person Authentication, Washington, DC, USA."},{"key":"ref_37","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"197","DOI":"10.1016\/0167-8655(90)90006-N","article-title":"Fuzzy thresholding: Mathematical framework, bound functions and weighted moving average technique","volume":"11","author":"Murthy","year":"1990","journal-title":"Pattern Recogn. Lett."},{"key":"ref_38","unstructured":"Nusirwan, A., Kit, C.W., and John, S. (2006, January 16\u201317). RGB-H-CbCr Skin Colour Model for Human Face Detection. Proceedings of the MMU International Symposium on Information&Communications Technologies, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia."},{"key":"ref_39","first-page":"4229","article-title":"Comparative study for two color spaces HSCbCr and YCbCr in skin color detection","volume":"6","author":"Chitra","year":"2012","journal-title":"Appl. Math. Sci."},{"key":"ref_40","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"379","DOI":"10.1002\/j.1538-7305.1948.tb01338.x","article-title":"A Mathematical Theory of Communication","volume":"27","author":"Shannon","year":"1948","journal-title":"Bell Syst. Tech. J."},{"key":"ref_41","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"323","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ins.2012.07.049","article-title":"Local Shannon entropy measure with statistical tests for image randomness","volume":"222","author":"Wu","year":"2013","journal-title":"Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_42","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"414","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ijleo.2016.11.039","article-title":"A two-dimensional image segmentation method based on genetic algorithm and entropy","volume":"131","author":"Omer","year":"2017","journal-title":"Optik"},{"key":"ref_43","unstructured":"Susan, S., and Kumar, A. (2016, January 16\u201318). Auto-segmentation using mean-shift and entropy analysis. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Computing for Sustainable Global Development, New Delhi, India."},{"key":"ref_44","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Bhowmik, M., Sarkar, A., and Das, R. (2015, January 7\u20138). Shannon entropy based fuzzy distance norm for pixel classification in remote sensing imagery. Proceedins of the Third International Conference on Computer, Communication, Control and Information Technology, Hooghly, India.","DOI":"10.1109\/C3IT.2015.7060200"},{"key":"ref_45","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"857","DOI":"10.1016\/S0031-3203(97)00113-1","article-title":"Threshold selection based on fuzzy c-partition entropy approach","volume":"31","author":"Cheng","year":"1998","journal-title":"Pattern Recogn."},{"key":"ref_46","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2894","DOI":"10.1016\/j.patcog.2014.03.009","article-title":"Efficient multilevel image segmentation through fuzzy entropy maximization and graph cut optimization","volume":"47","author":"Yin","year":"2014","journal-title":"Pattern Recogn."},{"key":"ref_47","unstructured":"Di Stefano, L., and Bulgarelli, A. (1999, January 27\u201329). A simple and efficient connected components labeling algorithm. Proceedings of the 1999 International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing, Venice, Italy."},{"key":"ref_48","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Fox, N.A., O\u2019Mullane, B.A., and Reilly, R.B. (2005, January 20\u201322). VALID: A new practical audio-visual database, and comparative results. Proceedings of the 2005 International Conference on Audio-and Video-Based Biometric Person Authentication, Hilton Rye Town, NY, USA.","DOI":"10.1007\/11527923_81"},{"key":"ref_49","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1090","DOI":"10.1109\/34.879790","article-title":"The FERET evaluation methodology for face-recognition algorithms","volume":"22","author":"Phillips","year":"2000","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell."},{"key":"ref_50","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1789","DOI":"10.1109\/TCE.2010.5606327","article-title":"Skin color enhancement based on favorite skin color in HSV color space","volume":"56","author":"Zhang","year":"2010","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Consum. Electr."},{"key":"ref_51","first-page":"204","article-title":"Learning-based face detection by adaptive switching of skin color models and AdaBoost under varying illumination","volume":"2","author":"Huang","year":"2011","journal-title":"J. Inf. Hiding Multimed. Signal Process."},{"key":"ref_52","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"137","DOI":"10.1023\/B:VISI.0000013087.49260.fb","article-title":"Robust Real-Time Face Detection","volume":"57","author":"Viola","year":"2004","journal-title":"Int. J. Comput. Vis."},{"key":"ref_53","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Li, H., Lin, Z., Shen, X., Brandt, J., and Hua, G. (2015, January 8\u201310). A Convolutional Neural Network Cascade for Face Detection. Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Boston, MA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/CVPR.2015.7299170"}],"container-title":["Entropy"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1099-4300\/19\/1\/26\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T18:25:56Z","timestamp":1760207156000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1099-4300\/19\/1\/26"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2017,1,11]]},"references-count":53,"journal-issue":{"issue":"1","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,1]]}},"alternative-id":["e19010026"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/e19010026","relation":{},"ISSN":["1099-4300"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1099-4300","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2017,1,11]]}}}