Using the principal component analysis of shape and arrangement information of facial parts obtained from input images, it's possible to generate facial caricatures automatically by computer. Each principal component includes mixed information of facial parts features such as length, thickness and so on. Changes of these facial features depend on combination of principal components, and it's difficult to control them intuitively. This paper firstly examines the principal components which represent the features of facial part such as length. thickness and so on. Then these features are treated quantitatively and described by words. Next, the method to retrieve similar face images based on above features of each facial part is proposed. Subjective evaluation of retrieval results show that they accord with those obtained by human examinees.
