Assessing Automated Facial Action Unit Detection Systems for Analyzing Cross-Domain Facial Expression Databases

• Main Authors: Shushi Namba, Wataru Sato, Masaki Osumi, Koh Shimokawa
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-06-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: action unit; automatic facial detection; facial expressions; machine analysis; sensing dynamic face
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/21/12/4222

In the field of affective computing, achieving accurate automatic detection of facial movements is an important issue, and great progress has already been made. However, a systematic evaluation of systems that now have access to the dynamic facial database remains an unmet need. This study compared the performance of three systems (FaceReader, OpenFace, AFARtoolbox) that detect each facial movement corresponding to an action unit (AU) derived from the Facial Action Coding System. All machines could detect the presence of AUs from the dynamic facial database at a level above chance. Moreover, OpenFace and AFAR provided higher area under the receiver operating characteristic curve values compared to FaceReader. In addition, several confusion biases of facial components (e.g., AU12 and AU14) were observed to be related to each automated AU detection system and the static mode was superior to dynamic mode for analyzing the posed facial database. These findings demonstrate the features of prediction patterns for each system and provide guidance for research on facial expressions.