Gender classification is a critical task in computer vision. This task holds substantial importance in various domains, including surveillance, marketing, and human-computer interaction. In this work, the face gender classification model proposed consists of three main phases: the first phase involves applying the Viola-Jones algorithm to detect facial images, which includes four steps: 1) Haar-like features, 2) Integral Image, 3) Adaboost Learning, and 4) Cascade Classifier. In the second phase, four pre-processing operations are employed, namely cropping, resizing, converting the image from(RGB) Color Space to (LAB) color space, and enhancing the images using (HE, CLAHE). The final phase involves utilizing Transfer learning, a powerful deep learning technique that can be effectively employed to Face gender classification using the Alex-Net architecture. The performance evaluation of the proposed gender classification model encompassed three datasets: the LFW dataset, which contained 1,200 facial images. The Faces94 dataset contained 400 facial images, and the family dataset had 400. The Transfer Learning with the Alex-Net model achieved an accuracy of 98.77% on the LFW dataset.
Furthermore, the model attained an accuracy rate of 100% on both the Faces94 and family datasets. Thus, the proposed system emphasizes the significance of employing pre-processing techniques and transfer learning with the Alex-Net model. These methods contribute to more accurate results in gender classification. Where, the results achieved by applying image contrast enhancement techniques, such as HE and CLAHE, were compared. CLAHE achieved the best facial classification accuracy compared to HE.
