Dense Face Network: A Dense Face Detector Based on Global Context and Visual Attention Mechanism

Face detection has achieved tremendous strides thanks to convolutional neural networks. However, dense face detection remains an open challenge due to large face scale variation, tiny faces, and serious occlusion. This paper presents a robust, dense face detector using global context and visual attention mechanisms which can significantly improve detection accuracy. Specifically, a global context fusion module with top-down feedback is proposed to improve the ability to identify tiny faces. Moreover, a visual attention mechanism is employed to solve the problem of occlusion. Experimental results on the public face datasets WIDER FACE and FDDB demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.