This paper presents a method for the automatic detection of facial landmarks. The algorithm receives a set of 3D candidate points for each landmark (e.g. from a feature detector) and performs combinatorial search constrained by a deformable shape model. A key assumption of our approach is that for some landmarks there might not be an accurate candidate in the input set. This is tackled by detecting partial subsets of landmarks and inferring those that are missing so that the probability of the deformable model is maximized. The ability of the model to work with incomplete information makes it possible to limit the number of candidates that need to be retained, substantially reducing the number of possible combinations to be tested with respect to the alternative of trying to always detect the complete set of landmarks. We demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed method in a set of 144 facial scans acquired by means of a hand-held laser scanner in the context of clinical craniofacial dysmorphology research. Using spin images to describe the geometry and targeting 11 facial landmarks, we obtain an average error below 3 mm, which compares favorably with other state of the art approaches based on geometric descriptors.
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