Extract face rectangle from ID card - opencv

Question

I’m researching the subject of extracting the information from ID cards and have found a suitable algorithm to locate the face on the front. As it is, OpenCV has Haar cascades for that, but I’m unsure what can be used to extract the full rectangle that person is in instead of just the face (as is done in https://github.com/deepc94/photo-id-ocr). The few ideas that I’m yet to test are:
Find second largest rectangle that’s inside the card containing the face rect
Do “explode” of the face rectangle until it hits the boundary
Play around with filters to see what can be seen
What can be recommended to try here as well? Any thoughts, ideas or even existing examples are fine.

Answer 1

Normal approach:
import cv2
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
image = cv2.imread("a.jpg")
gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
_,thresh = cv2.threshold(gray,128,255,cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
cv2.imshow("thresh",thresh)
thresh = cv2.bitwise_not(thresh)
element = cv2.getStructuringElement(shape=cv2.MORPH_RECT, ksize=(7, 7))
dilate = cv2.dilate(thresh,element,6)
cv2.imshow("dilate",dilate)
erode = cv2.erode(dilate,element,6)
cv2.imshow("erode",erode)
morph_img = thresh.copy()
cv2.morphologyEx(src=erode, op=cv2.MORPH_CLOSE, kernel=element, dst=morph_img)
cv2.imshow("morph_img",morph_img)
_,contours,_ = cv2.findContours(morph_img,cv2.RETR_TREE,cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
areas = [cv2.contourArea(c) for c in contours]
sorted_areas = np.sort(areas)
cnt=contours[areas.index(sorted_areas[-3])] #the third biggest contour is the face
r = cv2.boundingRect(cnt)
cv2.rectangle(image,(r[0],r[1]),(r[0]+r[2],r[1]+r[3]),(0,0,255),2)
cv2.imshow("img",image)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
I found the first two biggest contours are the boundary, the third biggest contour is the face. Result:
There is also another way to investigate the image, using sum of pixel values by axises:
x_hist = np.sum(morph_img,axis=0).tolist()
plt.plot(x_hist)
plt.ylabel('sum of pixel values by X-axis')
plt.show()
y_hist = np.sum(morph_img,axis=1).tolist()
plt.plot(y_hist)
plt.ylabel('sum of pixel values by Y-axis')
plt.show()
Base on those pixel sums over 2 asixes, you can crop the region you want by setting thresholds for it.

Answer 2

Haarcascades approach (The most simple)
# Using cascade Classifiers
import numpy as np
import cv2
# We point OpenCV's CascadeClassifier function to where our
# classifier (XML file format) is stored
face_classifier = cv2.CascadeClassifier('haarcascade_frontalface_default.xml')
# Load our image then convert it to grayscale
image = cv2.imread('./your/image/path.jpg')
gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
cv2.imshow('Original image', image)
# Our classifier returns the ROI of the detected face as a tuple
# It stores the top left coordinate and the bottom right coordiantes
faces = face_classifier.detectMultiScale(gray, 1.3, 5)
# When no faces detected, face_classifier returns and empty tuple
if faces is ():
print("No faces found")
# We iterate through our faces array and draw a rectangle
# over each face in faces
for (x, y, w, h) in faces:
x = x - 25 # Padding trick to take the whole face not just Haarcascades points
y = y - 40 # Same here...
cv2.rectangle(image, (x, y), (x + w + 50, y + h + 70), (27, 200, 10), 2)
cv2.imshow('Face Detection', image)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
Link to the haarcascade_frontalface_default file

Answer 3

update to #Sanix darker code,
# Using cascade Classifiers
import numpy as np
import cv2
img = cv2.imread('link_to_your_image')
face_classifier = cv2.CascadeClassifier(cv2.data.haarcascades + 'haarcascade_frontalface_default.xml')
scale_percent = 60 # percent of original size
width = int(img.shape[1] * scale_percent / 100)
height = int(img.shape[0] * scale_percent / 100)
dim = (width, height)
# resize image
image = cv2.resize(img, dim, interpolation = cv2.INTER_AREA)
gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
# face classifier
faces = face_classifier.detectMultiScale(gray, 1.3, 5)
# When no faces detected, face_classifier returns and empty tuple
if faces is ():
print("No faces found")
# We iterate through our faces array and draw a rectangle
# over each face in faces
for (x, y, w, h) in faces:
x = x - 25 # Padding trick to take the whole face not just Haarcascades points
y = y - 40 # Same here...
cv2.rectangle(image, (x, y), (x + w + 50, y + h + 70), (27, 200, 10), 2)
cv2.imshow('Face Detection', image)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
# if you want to crop the face use below code
for (x, y, width, height) in faces:
roi = image[y:y+height, x:x+width]
cv2.imwrite("face.png", roi)