We propose an algorithm to detect the face region using a variable ellipsoidal mask and a neural network. Since outlines of human faces are similar to ellipsoid, the ellipsoidal mask that has the fixed ratio of major and minor axis can be used to detect the candidate area. The positions of eyes and lips are extracted in this candidate area, and then the morphological analysis is applied to make features which are consist of six parameters, such as the geometrical ratio of eyes and lips. A back-propagation neural network is used as a classifier to determine the most possible face region. The experimental result is conducted to verify its efficiency compared with those of previous works.