Facial recognition and the open mouth problem

Apparatus for cropping a representation of a face for electronic processing, said face having differential mouth opening states including an open mouth state, a closed mouth state and at least one intermediate state therebetween, the apparatus comprising:

• a first masking unit for selecting a first geodesic contour about an invariant reference point on said face, and setting a region within said first geodesic contour as a first mask,
• a second masking unit for selecting a second geodesic contour about a boundary of said identified mouth region, and setting a region within said second geodesic contour as a second mask, and
• a third masking unit for forming a final mask from a union of said first mask and said second mask, thereby to provide cropping of said face such as to obtain a fill facial region and negligible background within said cropping for any of said mouth opening states.