Spin images representing efficiently surface features of 3D mesh models have been used to detect facial landmark points. However, at a certain point, different normal direction can lead to quite different spin images. Moreover, since 3D points are projected to the 2D (α-β) space during spin image generation, surface features cannot be described clearly. In this paper, we present a method to detect 3D facial landmark using improved spin images by partitioning the search area with respect to

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... . By generating sub-spin images for angular partitioned 3D spaces, more unique features describing corresponding surfaces can be obtained, and improve the performance of landmark detection. In order to generate spin images robust to inaccurate surface normal direction, we utilize on averaging surface normal with its neighboring normal vectors. The experimental results show that the proposed method increases the accuracy in landmark detection by about 34% over a conventional method.