Reliable facial expression recognition for multi-scale images using weber local binary image based cosine transform features Sajid Ali Khan 1 & Ayyaz Hussain 2 & Muhammad Usman 1 Received: 27 June 2016 /Revised: 4 November 2016 /Accepted: 27 December 2016 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017 Abstract Accurate recognition of facial expression is a challenging problem especially from multi-scale and multi orientation face images. In this article, we propose a novel technique called Weber Local Binary Image Cosine Transform (WLBI-CT). WLBI-CT extracts and integrates the frequency components of images obtained through Weber local descriptor and local binary descriptor. These frequency components help in accurate classification of various facial expressions in the challenging domain of multi-scale and multi-orientation facial images. Identification of significant feature set plays a vital role in the success of any facial expression recognition system. Effect of multiple feature sets with varying block sizes has been investi- gated using different multi-scale images taken from well-known JAFEE, MMI and CK+ datasets. Extensive experimentation has been performed to demonstrate that the proposed technique outperforms the contemporary techniques in terms of recognition rate and compu- tational time. Keywords Facial expression recognition . Discrete cosine transform . Local binary image . Weber local descriptor . Multi-scale images . Dimension reduction Multimed Tools Appl DOI 10.1007/s11042-016-4324-z * Sajid Ali Khan sajidalibn@gmail.com Ayyaz Hussain ayyaz.hussain@iiu.edu.pk Muhammad Usman dr.usman@szabist-isb.edu.pk 1 Department of Computer Science, Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology, House#13, Street 52, CAT B, G.10/3, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan 2 Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan