In this paper active feature models are proposed. They utilize local texture features and a statistical shape model for the reliable localization of landmarks in images. They are related to active appearance models, but instead of modelling the entire texture of an object they represent image texture by means of local descriptors. The approach has advantages with complex image data like anatomical structures that exhibit high texture variation with limited relevance for the recognition of the object location. Experimental results and the comparison to AAMs on different data sets indicate that active feature models can improve search speed and result accuracy, considerably.