I was trying to build a basic Face Recognition system (PCA-Eigenfaces) using OpenCV 2.2 (from Willow Garage). I understand from many of the previous posts on Face Recognition that there is no standard open source library that can provide all the face recognition for you.
Instead, I would like to know if someone has used the functions(and integrated them):
icvCalcCovarMatrixEx_8u32fR
icvCalcEigenObjects_8u32fR
icvEigenProjection_8u32fR
et.al in the eigenobjects.cpp
to form a face recognition system, because the functions seem to provide much of the required functionality along with cvSvd
?
I am having a tough time trying to understand to do so since I am new to OpenCV.
With OpenCV it's easy to get started with face detection. It comes with some predefined sets for feature detection, including face detection.
You might already know this one: OpenCV Wiki, FaceDetection
The important functions in this example are cvLoad and cvHaarDetectObjects. The first one loads the classifier and the second one applies it to an image. The standard classifiers work pretty well. Of course you can train your own classifiers, if the standard ones don't fit your purpose.
As you said there are a lot of algorithms for face detection. Some of them might provide better results, but OpenCV is definitively a good start.