Patent ID: 7555148
Filing Date: 2009-06-30
Classification: G06F,G06K

Abstract:
1. A processor-based system operating according to digitally-embedded programming instructions residing on one or more processor-readable memories and communicating with one or more digital data storage media for classifying and archiving images including face regions that are acquired with an image acquisition device, the programming instructions comprising: (a) a face detection module for identifying a group of pixels corresponding to a face region within digital image data acquired by the acquisition device; (b) a normalization module for generating a normalized face region from said face region, including pose normalizing said face region; (c) a face recognition module for extracting a set of values of face classifier parameters from said normalized face region, said set of face classifier parameter values being collectively known as a faceprint associated with said normalized face region; (d) a workflow module for comparing said extracted faceprint to a database of archived faceprints previously determined to correspond to one or more known identities, and for determining based on the comparing whether a new faceprint corresponds to any of the one or more known identities, the workflow module further for associating the new faceprint and normalized face region from which said faceprint is derived with a new or known identity within a database comprising other data corresponding to the archived faceprints and associated parent images for performing further comparisons with further faceprints; and (e) a database module for archiving the data according to the associating by the workflow module within one or more digital data storage media, and wherein one or more archived faceprints have been previously determined to correspond to the one or more known identities, and the comparing by the workflow module comprises determining proximities of the values of the face classifier parameters of the new face print image with values corresponding to the one or more archived faceprints, and wherein the determining by the face recognition module comprises automatically determining that the new faceprint corresponds to a known identity based on one or more geometric distance proximities being within a predetermined proximity threshold, and wherein the predetermined proximity threshold comprises a first threshold, and the determining by the workflow module comprises requesting user confirmation whether the normalized face region associated with the new faceprint corresponds to a known identity when a geometric distance proximity is outside the first threshold and within a second threshold greater than the first threshold.