International Conference on Computing, Communication and Automation (ICCCA2015)
Human Gait Based Gender Identification
System Using Hidden Markov Model and
Support Vector Machines
Deepjoy Das
Department of Computer Science & Engineering
National Institute of Technology Meghalaya
Shillong, Meghalaya, India
deepjoy2002@gmail.com
Abstract—The paper presents an approach towards
human gender recognition system. The Silhouettes
from Center for Biometrics and Security Research
(CASIA) gait database are segmented in order to iden-
tify major body points and to generate corresponding
point-light display. The features such as two dimen-
sional coordinates of major body points and joint
angles are extracted from the point-light display. The
features are classified using Hidden Markov Model
(HMM) and Support Vector Machines (SVM). The study
yields a recognition rate of 69.18% and 76.79% with 100
subject data using HMM and SVM respectively. There
has been a significant improvement in recognition
accuracy using joint angles as the features.
Keywords—Gender Recognition/Identification,
Point-light (PL) display, Hidden Markov Model
(HMM), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Human Gait.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Perceiving actions, emotion, intentions, gender &
identity of others is an amazing skill every human pos-
sesses and human visual system provides an accurate
interpretation of it. However not much is known about
how this biological relevant information is encoded in
visual motion patterns and is used in perception. In
1973, G. Johansson [1] [2] devised the term known
as PL animation, in which an observer is able to
recognize a person familiar to them, when the motion
is portrayed by small number of markers positioned on
the head and the joints of the body. A large number of
studies related to human perception have used Johans-
son's point light display [1] [2]. Point-light (PL) display
contains sufficient information to perceive actions [3],
gender [4] [5] [6] [7] [8], emotions [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]
[14] and to identify individuals [15] [16] [17] [18].
Study of gait abnormalities is also used in diagnosis
of diabetes [19], Hydrocephalus [20], Osteoarthritis
[21], Orthopedic impairments [22] [23] and in diagnosis
of mental ailments such as patients with schizophrenia
[24] [25], depression [26] [27], Alzheimer's disease [28]
[29] [30] and Parkinson's disease [31] [32].
Gait based gender identification system has a sig-
nificant advantage over other techniques as collection
ISBN:978-1-4799-8890-7/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE
Alok Chakrabarty
Department of Computer Science & Engineering
National Institute of Technology Meghalaya
Shillong, Meghalaya, India
mcscalok@gmail.com
of human gait data doesn't require the subject to be in
close proximity with the sensor as in gender identifi-
cation using facial expression, Electroencephalography
(EEG) etc. It also possesses disadvantages like change
in footwear can have varying gait patterns [33]. Gait
pattern also differ in patients suffering from diabetes,
Parkinson's disease etc. [34] [35].
II. P REVIOUS W ORK
The first study on gender recognition conducted in
year 1977, demonstrated that observers were able to
recognize gender with a performance of 63% accuracy,
when light sources mounted on joints during waking
concluded that PL points are the sufficient cues for the
study [15]. Similar study conducted by Barclay et al.
[4] in year 1978, concluded with numerous profound
results - 1) At most two gait cycles is required to
determine gender from biological motion, gait cycles
less than that will result in reduction of performance,
2) Manipulation in speed can have a stronger effect
in altered gait recognition, 3) Blurring the dots of PL
walker can cause recognition accuracy to be dropped,
4) Inversion of PL points by 180 degrees would result
in decreased accuracy. The inversion result concluded
in an interesting result that in male the ratio width
of shoulder and hip is positive, in female the ratio is
negative. This concludes that detecting shoulder & hip
width is sufficient for gender identification [4].
Yoo et al. [36] used stick view, which can be gener-
ated by connecting the point light points, and achieved
a recognition rate of 96% for 100 subjects using a
support vector based classifier. Davis et al. [37] used
point light display with an interesting adaptive three-
mode PCA to extract point-light display and got a
recognition accuracy rate of 95.5% in a 40 subject
database.
Pollick [38] conducted experiment to determine hu-
man efficiency for recognition of individuals using
Point light display. The estimates of efficiency of hu-
man performance were compared to artificial neural
network performance. The study expressed efficiency
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 International Conference on Computing, Communication and Automation (ICCCA2015)
as the squared ratio of human sensitivity to neural
network sensitivity.
III. O UR A PPROACH
The silhouettes of CASIA gait database B is used,
from which we have used silhouette data for 50 males
and 50 females. In total 100 subjects are used for the
study. We follow a set of pre-processing step in order to
extract the required features for gender identification,
scale the features & finally model the features using
Hidden Markov Model (HMM) and Support Vector
Machines (SVM) respectively for classification of new
features.
A. Silhouette Noise Removal
Noise in the form of white dots popularly known as
salt noise are removed from the silhouette using mor-
phological opening operation with structuring element
(SE) of size 6 × 6.
The opening of a set A by SE B, denoted by A ◦ B is
defined as [39],
A ◦ B = ((A  B) ⊕ B)
Where, A  B is defined as erosion of A by B (A and
B are sets in Z2 ) [39],
A  B = {z | (B)z ⊆ A}
A ⊕ B is defined as dilution of A by B (A and B are
sets in Z2 ) [39],
A ⊕ B = {z | (B  )z ∩ A = φ}
Fig. 1. Silhouettes of CASIA database. Subjects to the left side of
figure are males & subjects to the right side of figure are females.
B. Segmentation & Body Point Extraction
The area and centroid of grayscale image I(x, y) is
determined using the raw moment of order 0 and order
1 using the equation

Mij = xi y i I(x, y) (4)
x y
 
The area and centroid are M00 & M10 M01
respec-
M00 , M00
tively.
The max point Imax and min point Imin in vertical
direction of image I(x, y) of size N × M is defined
as the first and last dot in the vertical direction, we
scan for max and min in the vertical direction, keeping
horizontal coordinate same as x0 .

do {y = y − 1}
Imax = (5)
while {I(x0 , y − 1) = I(x0 , y)} 2  y  y0

do {y = y + 1}
Imin =
while {I(x0 , y + 1) = I(x0 , y)} y0  y  M − 1
(1) (6)
The height of the person is simply computed using
absolute difference of the max and min points.
H = |Imax (x, y) − Imin (x, y)| (7)
(2)
The image is segmented using the height. For a
body height H, an estimate of head is 0% of H, neck is
13% of H, hand is between 35-50% of H, waist is 47%
of H, knee is 71.5% of H and foot is between 93-98% of
H. (All points are distances from horizontal axis) [17]
(3) [36].
The image is segmented further in order to search
and locate other body points. We now search in the
horizontal direction keeping the fixed range of 35-50%
of H in vertical direction, to find the front and rear
hand point (in terms of distance from vertical axis)
respectively. Similarly, the front and rear coordinate
points of the knee and foot are identified [17].
Two dimensional coordinates of the body points
identified are as follows: Head, Neck, Front Hand, Rear
Hand, Centroid, Front Knee, Rear Knee, Front Foot,
and Rear Foot.
C. Linear Interpolation to Estimate the Invisible Body
Points
The body points such as front hand, rear hand
and leg point disappear behind the body in each gait
cycle, or in a multi-person walking scenario one of the
subjects disappears behind the other. In such cases, the
body points are to be estimated by linear interpolation
for those frames. Let the body points of frame t are to
be estimated by linear interpolation of estimated body
points of the frame t−1 and frame t+1. Let (x1 , y1 ) and
(x3 , y3 ) be the 2-dimensional coordinates of frame t − 1
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 International Conference on Computing, Communication and Automation (ICCCA2015)

Euclidean distance between head and neck point, hor-

izontal and vertical distances between each of the
following points are taken as features: distance of front
hand and centroid point, rear hand and centroid point,
front knee and centroid point, rear knee and centroid
point, front foot and front knee point, rear foot and
rear knee point.
The set of 9 angles between the major body joint
were computed: Angle between the head and the body
[few persons walk with their heads bent], front hand
and the body [measures the amount of front arm
swing], rear arm and the body [measures the amount
of rear arm swing], front thigh and vertical axis [mea-
sures the amount of front knee swing], rear thigh
and vertical axis [measures the amount of rear knee
swing], front leg shin and vertical axis, rear leg shin
and vertical axis, front leg foot and horizontal axis,
rear leg foot and horizontal axis.
Height, area, velocity (computed using displace-
Fig. 2. Segmented silhouettes of CASIA database.
ment of centroid) along with 13 Euclidean distances
& 9 major joint angles forms a 25-dimensional feature
vector for a single frame which uniquely distinguishes
and frame t + 1. The estimation of coordinates (x2 , y2 ) it from other frame(s) of any silhouette data.
of frame t is given by
We consider 50 walking subjects of each gender. As
x1 + x 3 we need fixed size feature vectors as an input for SVM,
x2 = (8)
2 we consider 300 random frames for silhouette data of
each subject. Therefore, the size of the total feature
(x2 − x1 )(y3 − y1 ) vector is 15000 × 25.
y2 = + y1 (9)
x3 − x1

E. Feature Scaling
The feature vectors are scaled in the range of [0, 1].

M (i, j) − P (i)
M  (i, j) = f or1  i  K, 1  j  25 (10)
Q(i) − P (i)

Where, M and M  represents unscaled and scaled

feature matrix respectively, each of size 15000 × 25.
P and Q represent minimum and maximum value in
linear vector of size 15000. The values in the feature
matrix M  is in range [0, 1]. K denotes the number of
frames.

IV. G ENDER R ECOGNITION U SING SVM

Fig. 3. Identified head, hand (left & right), centroid, knee (left &
right), leg (left & right) points from segmented silhouettes of CASIA
database. Subjects to the left side of the figure are males & subjects
to the right side of figure are females.
D. Total Feature Vector
The relative distances between the points were used
as a feature: The set of 13 distances are computed:
A. HMM Modeling
A continuous HMM consisting of set of N states
and M distinct observations v1 v2 ......vM can be distin-
guished using state transition probabilities A = {aij },
where aij = P (qt+1 = sj |qt = si ) , 1  i, j  N, state
conditional probabilities bj (k) = P (Ot = vk |st = j),
k = 1, 2, ......M , where Ot is the observation and st is
the active state at time t, and initial state distribution
πi = P (q1 = i) [40] [41].

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 International Conference on Computing, Communication and Automation (ICCCA2015)

B. SVM Modeling Body points for SVM

classification HMM
(out of Kα Kβ Kγ Kδ
SVMs are called as discriminative classifiers which 25-dimensions)
try to draw boundary between different sets of data FS-1:
by constructing a N dimensional hyperplane. Let xi be includes 23.48 23.02 23.98 23.62 23.58
the input data for the ith example and di is the cor-
responding target output, the equation of the decision D (H , N )
a b c

FS-2:
surface is given by, includes FS1
and features
wT x + b = 0 (11) below (5 of 25)
29.19 30.01 30.20 29.62 30.18
For a given weight vector w and bias b, the separation D(CV d ,F HV e )
D(CH f ,F HH g )
between the hyperplane is defined by the above equa-
D(CV ,RHV h )
tion and the closest data point is called the margin of D(CH,RHH i )
separation. SVM tries to find the hyperplane for which FS-3:
the margin of separation is maximized. The data points includes FS2
(xi , di ) which lie closest to the optimal hyperplane and features
are called support vectors. For this, non-linear data below (9 of 25)
38.86 40.12 42.75 42.07 41.38
kernel functions are used which map a given set of D(CV ,F KV j )
input vectors into a higher dimensional space for easy D(CH,F KH k )
classification. Some of the kernel functions used are as D(CV ,RKV l )
follows [42]: D(CH,RKH m )
FS-4:
• linear: K(xi , xj ) = xTi xj includes FS3
and features
• polynomial: K(xi , xj ) = (γ xTi xj + r)d , γ > 0 below (13 of 25)
45.19 46.69 53.29 52.51 51.69
D(CV ,F LV n )
• radial basis function: K(xi , xj ) = exp(-γ ||xi − D(CH,F LH o )
xj ||2 ), γ > 0 D(CV ,RLV p )
D(CH,RLH q )
• sigmoid: K(xi , xj ) = tanh(γ xTi xj + r) FS-5:
includes FS4
and features
Here, γ, r and d are kernel parameters. below (22 of 25) 61.71 63.92 71.75 71.76 69.58

We have used HTK Toolkit [43] and LIBSVM 9 Major

Toolkit [44] for Hidden Markov Model (HMM) and Sup- Joint Angles
port Vector Machine (SVM) modeling respectively. We FS-6:
divide the whole set of feature vector of size 15000 × 25 includes FS5
and features
into three parts as 60%, 20%, and 20% of the whole below (25 of 25) 69.18 69.15 76.79 75.74 72.98
set to obtain the training, cross-validation and testing
sets. Height
Area
Velocity
D a (x, y): Denotes Euclidean distance between element x and element y
H b : Denotes 2-dimensional coordinate of head, N c : Denotes 2-dimensional coordinate of neck,
V. C ONCLUSION CV d : Denotes vertical coordinate of centroid, CH e : Denotes horizontal coordinate of centroid,
F HV f : Denotes vertical coordinate of front hand, F HH g : Denotes horizontal coordinate of front hand,
RHV h : Denotes vertical coordinates of right hand, RHH i : Denotes horizontal coordinate of right hand,
We conclude that polynomial kernel of SVM yields F KV j : Denote vertical coordinate of front knee, F KH k : Denote horizontal coordinate of front knee,
RKV l : Denote vertical coordinate of right knee, RKH m : Denotes horizontal coordinate of right knee,
the highest recognition rate of 76.79% for our gender F LV n : Denotes vertical coordinate of front leg, F LH o : Denotes horizontal coordinates of front leg,
recognition system using 100 subject data. Almost all RLV p : Denotes vertical coordinate of right leg, RLH q : Denotes horizontal coordinate of right leg,
F S: Denotes feature set, K α : Denotes Linear Kernel, K β : Denotes Polynomial Kernel,
the kernels of SVM outperforms HMM at each stage K γ : Denotes RBF Kernel, K δ : Denotes Sigmoid Kernel.

of inclusion of new features. We further rank the TABLE I. R ECOGNITION A CCURACY OF HMM & SVM USING
SET OF DIFFERENT FEATURES.
RBF, Sigmoid, Linear kernels as second, third, fourth
performing SVM kernels respectively and HMM as
the least performing. It is also to be noted that the
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