US Patent 7027619 Near-infrared method and system for use in face detection

A method and system for use in detecting a face of a person includes providing image data representative of reflected light of a scene in at least one bandwidth within a reflected infrared radiation range. Regions of the scene in the image data which may correspond to one or both eyebrows of a person and which may correspond to one or both eyes of the person are extracted from the data. The extracted regions which may correspond to one or both eyebrows of the person are combined with the extracted regions that may correspond to one or both eyes of the person resulting in a composite feature image. The composite feature image is searched based on model data representative of an eye region to detect one or both eyes of the person.