Mobile devices have unique opportunities to interact with their environment; one key capability in this regard is the detection and recognition of human faces. Uses ranging from security to entertainment can be supported by determining when a person is in the camera’s field of view and whom that person might be. The general area of face detection and recognition has seen dramatic improvements in accuracy and performance. This book is intended to address the special needs and possibilities of face detection and recognition on a mobile platform.

In an initial section, Liu describes face detection and recognition and mobile computing at a very high level. This discussion is aimed at those with no experience in the topics; for example, the author describes what an app store is. Later in this section, he states some general issues with performing computer vision processes on a mobile platform.

The second section lists some well-known algorithms for both the detection and recognition of faces. The Viola-Jones method for recognizing predefined areas of intensity change is recounted in prose form--no mathematics is used--and the discussion is very readable. Some face recognition methods are briefly described (for example, local feature analysis is not mentioned). Only an overview is presented, and many areas are not mentioned (for example, there is no discussion of the difference between verification and identification applications). Finally, some description and results are presented for the application of active appearance models (AAMs) for face tracking.

The first thing that must be known about this book is how brief it is: only 36 pages. The author cannot possibly intend this to be a complete treatment of face processing algorithms, though approximately one-third of the volume is a light discussion of several common algorithms for detection and recognition. On the other hand, this book is not intended to comprehensively address the unique characteristics of mobile devices that relate to face processing, as processing power of mobile devices is discussed very lightly and the problem of face/camera relative motion only receives one brief mention.

The value of this slim volume is as a motivating statement: a good description of the problem and a list of references can serve as a focus for further work in the area. However, the book is not a sufficient resource for face recognition researchers to understand the special nature of the mobile platform, nor does it adequately equip mobile developers to include face processing in their applications.