A new method for hand segmentation using free-form skin color model

Accurate hand segmentation is a challenging task in computer vision applications. We propose a new method to segment hand based on free-form skin color model. The pixel value of a person's hand is captured and represented in YCbCr color model. The CbCr color space is mapped to a CbCr plane in order to produce a clustered region of skin color. Then, instead of using ellipse to model the skin color, edge detection is performed on the clustered region to construct a free-form skin color model. The hand segmentation result, tested on various complex backgrounds gives promising results.