Patent Publication Number: US-7899253-B2

Title: Detecting moving objects in video by classifying on riemannian manifolds

Description:
RELATED APPLICATION 
     This application is a Continuation in Part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/517,645, “Method for Classifying Data Using an Analytic Manifold” filed by Porikli et al. on Sep. 8, 2006 now U.S. Pat. No. 7,724,961. 
    
    
     FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
     The invention relates generally to classifying objects in set of images, and more particularly to detecting humans and vehicles in video using classifiers. 
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     Human Detection 
     Detecting humans in images is considered among the hardest examples of object detection problems. The articulated structure and variable appearance of the human body and clothing, combined with illumination and pose variations, contribute to the complexity of the problem. 
     Human detection methods can be separated into two groups based on the search method. The first group is based on sequentially applying a classifier at all the possible detection sub windows or regions in an image. A polynomial support vector machine (SVM) can be trained using Haar wavelets as human descriptors, P. Papageorgiou and T. Poggio, “A trainable system for object detection,” Intl. J. of Computer Vision, 38(1); 15-33, 2000. That work is extended to multiple classifiers trained to detect human parts, and the responses inside the detection window are combined to give the final decision, A. Mohan, C. Papageorgiou, and T. Poggio, “Example-based object detection in images by components,” IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Machine Intell., 23(4):349-360, 2001. 
     In a sequence of images, a real time moving human detection method uses Haar wavelet descriptors extracted from space-time differences, P. Viola, M. Jones, and D. Snow, “Detecting pedestrians using patterns of motion and appearance,” IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, New York, N.Y., volume 1, pages 734-741, 2003. Using AdaBoost, the most discriminative features are selected, and multiple classifiers are combined to form a rejection cascade, such that if any classifier rejects a hypothesis, then it is considered a negative example, 
     Another human detector trains an SVM classifier using a densely sampled histogram of oriented gradients, N. Dalai and B. Triggs, “Histograms of oriented gradients for human detection,” Proc. IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, volume 1, pages 886-893, 2005. 
     In a similar approach, near real time detection performances is achieved by training a cascade model using histogram of oriented gradients features, Q, Zhu, S. Avidan, M. C. Yell, and K. T. Cheng, “Fast human detection using a cascade of histograms of oriented gradients,” Proc. IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. New York, N.Y., volume 2, pages 1491-1498, 2006. 
     The second group of methods is based on detecting common parts, and assembling local features of the parts according to geometric constraints to form the final human model. The parts can be represented by co-occurrences of local orientation features and separate detectors can be trained for each part using AdaBoost. Human location can be determined by maximizing the joint likelihood of part occurrences combined according to the geometric relations. 
     A human detection method for crowded scenes is described by, B. Leibe, E. Seemann, and B. Schiele, “Pedestrian detection in crowded scenes,” Proc. IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, volume 1, pages 878-885, 2005. That method combines local appearance features and their geometric relations with global cues by top-down segmentation based on per pixel likelihoods. 
     Covariance features are described by O. Tuzel, F. Porikli, and P. Meer, “Region covariance: A fast descriptor for detection and classification,” Proc. European Conf. on Computer Vision, volume 2, pages 589-600, 2006, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/305,427, “Method for Constructing Covariance Matrices from Data Features” filed by Porikli et al. on Dec. 14, 2005, incorporated herein by reference. The features can be used for matching and texture classification problems, and was extended to object tracking. F. Porikli, O. Tuzel, and P. Meer, “Covariance tracking using model update based on Lie algebra,” In Proc. IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, New York, N.Y., volume 1, pages 728-735, 2006, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/352,145, “Method for Tracking Objects in Videos Using Covariance Matrices” filed by Porikli et at. on Feb. 9, 2006, incorporated herein by reference. A region was represented by the covariance matrix of image features, such as spatial location, intensity, higher order derivatives, etc. It is not adequate to use conventional machine techniques to train the classifiers because the covariance matrices do not lie on a vector space. 
     Symmetric positive definite matrices (nonsingular covariance matrices) can be formulated as a connected Riemannian manifold. Methods for clustering data points lying on differentiable manifolds are described by E. Begelfor and M. Werman, “Affine invariance revisited,” Proc. IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, New York, N.Y., volume 2, pages 2087-2094, 2006, R. Subbarao and P. Meer, “Nonlinear mean shift for clustering over analytic manifolds,” Proc. IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, New York, N.Y., volume 1, pages 1168-1175, 2006, and O. Tuzel, R. Subbarao, and P. Meer, “Simultaneous multiple 3D motion estimation via mode finding on Lie groups,” Proc. 10th Intl. Conf. on Computer Vision, Beijing, China, volume 1, pages 18-25, 2005, incorporated herein by reference. 
     Classifiers 
     Data classifiers have many practical applications in the sciences, research, engineering, medicine, economics, and sociology fields. Classifiers can be used for medical diagnosis, portfolio analysis, signal decoding, OCR, speech and face recognition, data raining, search engines, consumer preference selection, fingerprint identification, and the like, 
     Classifiers can be trained using either supervised or unsupervised learning techniques. In the later case, a model is fit to data without any a priori knowledge of the date, i.e., the input data are essentially a set of random variables with a normal distribution. The invention is concerned with supervised learning, where features are extracted from labeled training data in order to learn a function that maps observations to output. 
     Generally, a classifier is a mapping from discrete or continuous features X to a discrete set of labels Y. For example, in a face recognition system, features are extracted from images effaces. The classifier then labels each image as being, e.g., either male or female. 
     A linear classifier uses a linear function to discriminate the features. Formally, if an input to the classifier is a feature vector {right arrow over (x)}, then an estimated label y is 
               y   =       f   ⁡     (       ω   →     ·     x   →       )       =     f   (       ∑   j     ⁢       ω   j     ⁢     x   j         )         ,         
where {right arrow over (w)} is a real vector of weights, and ƒ a function that converts the dot product of the two vectors to the desired output. Often, ƒ is a simple function that maps all values above a certain threshold to “yes” and all other values to “no”.
 
     In such a two-class (binary) classification, the operation of the linear classifier “splits” a high-dimensional input space with a hyperplane. All points on one side of the hyperplane are classified as “yes”, while the others are classified as “no”. 
     The linear classifier is often used in situations where the speed of classification is an issue, because the linear classifier is often the fastest classifier, especially when the feature vector {right arrow over (x)} is sparse. 
     Riemannian Geometry 
     Riemannian geometry focuses on the space of symmetric positive definite matrices, see W. M. Boothby, “An Introduction to Differentiable Manifolds and Riemannian Geometry,” Academic Press, 2002, incorporated herein by reference. We refer to points lying on a vector space with small bold letters x ∈  , whereas points lying on the manifold with capital bold letters X ∈  . 
     Riemannian Manifolds 
     A manifold is a topological space, which is locally similar to a Euclidean space. Every point on the manifold has a neighborhood for which there exists a homeomorphism, i.e., one-to-one and continuous mapping in both directions, mapping the neighborhood to    m . For differentiable manifolds, it is possible to define the derivatives of the curves on the manifold. 
     In Riemannian geometry, the Riemannian manifold (M, g), is a real differentiable manifold M in which each tangent space is equipped with an inner product g in a manner, which varies smoothly from point to point. This allows one to define various notions such as the length of curves, angles, areas or volumes, curvature, gradients of functions and divergence of vector fields. 
     A Riemannian manifold can be defined as a metric space, which is isometric to a smooth submanifold of the manifold. A metric space is a set where distances between elements of the set are defined, e.g., a three-dimensional Euclidean space. The metric space is isometric to a smooth submanifold R n  with the induced intrinsic metric, where isometry here is meant in the sense of preserving the length of curves. A Riemannian manifold is an example of an analytic manifold, which is a topological manifold with analytic transition maps. 
     The inner product structure of the Riemannian manifold is given in the form of a symmetric 2-tensor called the Riemannian metric. The Riemannian metric can be used to interconvert vectors and covectors, and to define a rank-4 Riemannian curvature tensor. Any differentiable manifold can be given a Riemannian structure. 
     Turning the Riemannian manifold into a metric space is nontrivial. Even though a Riemannian manifold is usually “curved,” there is still a notion of “straight line” on the manifold, i.e., the geodesies that locally join points along a shortest path on a curved surface. 
     At a fixed point, the tangent bundle of a smooth manifold M, or indeed any vector bundle over a manifold, is a vector space, and each such space can carry an inner product. If such a collection of inner products on the tangent bundle of a manifold varies smoothly as one traverses the manifold, then concepts that were defined only point-wise at each tangent space can be extended to yield analogous notions over finite regions of the manifold. 
     For example, a smooth curve α(t): [0, 1]→M has tangent vector α′(t 0 ) in the tangent space TM(t 0 ) at any point t 0  ∈ (0, 1), and each such vector has length ∥α′(t 0 )∥, where ∥·∥ denotes the norm induced by the inner product on TM(t 0 ). The integral of these lengths gives the length of the curve α:
 
 L (α)=∫ 0   1 ∥α′( t )∥ dt.  
 
     In many instances, in order to pass from a linear-algebraic concept to a differential-geometric concept, the smoothness requirement is very important. Every smooth submanifold of R n  has an induced Riemannian metric g. The inner product on each tangent space is the restriction of the inner product on the submanifold R n . In fact, it follows from the Nash embedding theorem, which states that every Riemannian manifold can be embedded isometrically in the Euclidean space R n , all Riemannian manifolds can be realized this way. 
     The derivatives at a point X on the manifold lies in a vector space T X , which is the tangent space at that point. The Riemannian manifold   is a differentiable manifold in which each tangent: space has an inner product: &lt;, &gt;X, which varies smoothly from point to point. The inner product induces a norm, for the tangent vectors on the tangent space, such that, ∥y∥ 2   X =&lt;y, y&gt;X. 
     The minimum length curve connecting two points on the manifold is called a geodesic, and the distance between the points d(X, Y) is given by the length of this curve. Let y ∈ T X  and X ∈  . From point X, there exists a unique geodesic starting with the tangent vector y. The exponential map, exp X : T X   , maps the vector y to the point reached by this geodesic, and the distance of the geodesic is given by d(X, exp X (y))=∥y∥X. 
     In general, the exponential mapping exp X  is only one-to-one in a neighborhood of X. Therefore, the inverse mapping log X :     T X  is uniquely defined only around the neighborhood of the point X. If for any Y ∈  , there exists several y ∈ T X , such that Y=exp X (y), then log X (Y) is given by the tangent vector with the smallest: norm. Notice that both operators are point dependent where the dependence is made explicit with the subscript. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     The embodiments of the invention provide a method for detecting objects in images, particularly humans and pedestrians. The method uses covariance matrices as object descriptors. Particular forms of the covariance matrices are constructed using additional motion cues. Because these descriptors do not lie on a vector space, well-known machine learning techniques are not adequate to train a classifier to detect the object. The space of d-dimensional nonsingular covariance matrices is represented as a connected Riemannian manifold. The invention classifies points on a Riemannian manifold by incorporating a priori information about geometry of the search space. 
     Specifically, a method constructs a classifier from training data and detects moving objects in test data using the trained classifier. High-level features are generated from low-level features extracted from training data. The high level features are positive definite matrices on an analytical manifold. A subset of the high-level features is selected, and an intrinsic mean matrix is determined. Each high-level feature is mapped to a feature vector on a tangent space of the analytical manifold using the intrinsic mean matrix. An untrained classifier is trained with the feature vectors to obtain a trained classifier. Test high-level features are similarly generated from test low-level features. The test high-level features are classified using the trained classifier to detect moving objects in the test data. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         FIG. 1  is a flow diagram of a method for training a classifier for classifying test data according to an embodiment of the invention; 
         FIG. 2  is a flow diagram of a procedure for extracting low-level features from test data according to an embodiment of the invention; 
         FIG. 3  is a flow diagram of a procedure for converting low-level features to high-level features according to an embodiment of the invention; 
         FIGS. 4A-4E  are flow diagrams of procedures for training a classifier according to an embodiment of the invention; 
         FIG. 5  is a flow diagram of a procedure for determining an intrinsic mean covariance matrix according to an embodiment of the invention; 
         FIG. 6  is a flow diagram of details of a procedure for determining high-level features from motion cues according to an embodiment of the invention. 
         FIG. 7  is pseudo-code of details of a procedure for training a LogitBoost classifier according to an embodiment of the invention. 
         FIG. 8  a block diagram of a cascaded classifier for objects according to an embodiment of the invention. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 
     Classifier Construction and Classification 
       FIG. 1  shows a method  100  for constructing a trained classifier according to an embodiment of our invention. The classifier is constructed and trained using training data. By training data, we mean that the data are already labeled. The training data are used both to extract (labeled) features and to verify or measure a performance of the trained classifier. The trained classifier can then be used to classify test data. 
     Low-level features  101  are extracted  200  from training data  102 . The low-level features  101  are used to generate  300  high-level features  301 . The high level-features are the form of positive definite matrices on an analytical manifold. 
     A subset  111  of the high-level feature  301  is selected  110 . The subset  111  of the selected high-level features are used to determine  120  an intrinsic mean covariance matrix  121 . The intrinsic mean covariance matrix  121  defines a tangent space of the analytical manifold for the subset of high-level features. Tangent space is a local Euclidean space. The intrinsic mean matrix is used to map (project)  130  each high-level feature  301  to a feature vector  131  in the local Euclidean space of the manifold. Then, the feature vectors  131  are used to train  400  a classifier model  410  to produce the trained classifier  109 . 
     Subsequently, the trained classifier  601  can be used to classify  140  test data  104 . The classification assigns labels  105  to the test data. Feature vectors are produces for the test data in the same manner as described above. 
     Extract Low-Level Features 
       FIG. 2  shows the extraction  200  for an example test data  102 , e.g., an image or a video. It should be noted that the extraction of low-level features can also be for other data, such as acoustic signal, medical images, data sampled from physical processes, and the like. 
     The low-level features  101  can include pixel intensities, pixel colors, and derivative low-level features, such as gradients  201 , texture  202 , color histograms  203 , and motion vectors  204 . 
     Generate High-Level Features 
     The low-level features  101  are used to generate  300  the high-level features  301  on a analytical manifold. In a preferred embodiment, the high-level features are positive definite matrices on a Riemannian manifold, projected onto a tangent space using the intrinsic mean matrix. More specifically the positive definite matrices are covariance matrices of the low-level features. This is done by determining  310  covariance matrices  311  from the low-level features using windows  320 . 
     High-level features in the form of covariance matrices is described generally in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/305,427, “Method for Constructing Covariance Matrices From Data Features,” filed by Porikli et al, on Dec. 14, 2005, incorporated herein by reference, 
     For objects that are symmetric along one or more axes, we construct high-level features for the image windows that are symmetrical parts along the corresponding axes. For example, for human or face, the objects are symmetrical along a vertical line passing through the center of the image, thus, the high level features are computed in two symmetrical regions along that axis instead of only one region. 
     Covariance Descriptors 
     The covariance matrix provides a natural way for combining multiple low-features features that might otherwise be correlated. The diagonal entries of each covariance matrix represent the variance of each high-level feature and the non-diagonal entries represent the correlations of the high-level features. Because covariance matrices do not lie in Euclidean space, that method uses a distance metric involving generalized eigenvalues, which follow from Lie group structures of positive definite matrices. 
     Covariance descriptors, which we adapt for human detection in images according to embodiments of our invention, can be described as follows. A one-dimensional intensity or three-dimensional color image is I, and a W×H×d dimensional low-level feature image extracted from the image I is
 
 F ( x, y )=Φ( I, x, y ),   (1)
 
where the function Φ can be any mapping, such as intensity, color, gradients, filter responses, etc. For a given rectangular detection window or region R in the feature image F, the d-dimensional features inside the rectangular region R is {z j } i=1 . . . S . The region R is represented with the d×d covariance matrix of the features
 
                       C   R     =       1     S   -   1       ⁢       ∑     i   =   1     S     ⁢           ⁢       (       z   i     -   μ     )     ⁢       (       z   i     -   μ     )     T             ,           (   2   )               
where μ is the mean of the features z, and T is the transform operator.
 
     For the human detection problem, we define the mapping Φ(I, x, y) as eight (d=8) low-level features 
                       {     x   ⁢           ⁢   y   ⁢          I   x          ⁢           ⁢          I   y          ⁢         I   x   2     +     I   y   2         ⁢           ⁢          I   xx          ⁢           ⁢          I   yy          ⁢           ⁢   arctan   ⁢           ⁢            I   x                 I   y              ]     T     ,           (   3   )               
where x and y are pixel coordinates, I x , I xx , . . . are intensity derivatives, arctan(|I x |/|I y |) is an edge orientation, and T is the transpose operator.
 
     We can use different type and number of low-level features for detection. 
     With the defined mapping, the input image is mapped to the eight-dimensional low-level feature image F as defined by Equation (3). The covariance descriptor of the region r is the 8×8 covariance matrix C R . Due to symmetry, only an upper triangular part is stored, which has only 36 different values. The descriptor encodes information of the variances of the defined features inside the region, their correlations with each other, and a spatial layout. 
     The covariance descriptors can be determined using integral images, O. Tuzel, F. Porikli, and P. Meer, “Region covariance: A fast descriptor for detection and classification,” Proc. European Conf. on Computer Vision, Graz, Austria, volume 2, pages 589-600, 2006, incorporated herein by reference. 
     After constructing d(d+1)/2 integral images, the covariance descriptor of any rectangular region can be determined independent of the size of the region, see Tuzel et al. above. Given an arbitrary sized region R, there are a very large number of covariance descriptors that can be from subregions r 1,2, . . . . 
     As shown in  FIG. 8 , the integral image  102  can be partitioned into multiple regions  321 . Locations of windows  320  are generated  325  from the given training regions  321 , according shape and size constraints  322 . For each window, the low-level features  101  in the window  320  are used to determine a covariance matrix. 
     We perform sampling and consider subregions r, starting with a minimum size of 1/10 of the width and height of the detection regions R, at all pixel locations. The size of the subwindow r is incremented in steps of 1/10 along the horizontal or vertical directions, or both, until the subregion equals the region, r=R. 
     Although this approach might be considered redundant due to overlaps, the overlapping regions are an important factor in detection performances. The boosting mechanism, which is described below, enables us to search for the best regions. The covariance descriptors are robust towards illumination changes. We enhance this property to also include local illumination variations in an image. 
     A possible feature subregion r is inside the detection region R. We determine the covariance of the detection regions C R  and subregion C r  using the integral image representation described above. The normalized covariance matrix is determined by dividing the columns and rows of the covariance matrix C r  with respective diagonal entries of the matrix C R . This is equivalent to first normalizing the feature vectors inside the region R to have zero mean and unit standard deviation, and after that, determining the covariance descriptor of the subregion r. 
     Using the windows  325 , the covariance matrices  311  can be constructed  330  on the Riemannian manifold. The matrices  311  can then be normalized  340  using the windows  320  to produce the high-level features  301 . 
     Projection to Tangent Space 
     The d×d dimensional symmetric positive definite matrices (nonsingular covariance matrices) Sym +   d , can be formulated as a connected Riemannian manifold and an invariant Riemannian metric on the tangent space of Sym +   d , is 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
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     The operators exp and log are the conventional matrix exponential and logarithm operators. Not to he confused, the operators exp X  and log X  are the manifold specific operators, which are also point dependent, X ∈ Sym +   d . The tangent space of Sym +   d  is the space of d×d symmetric matrices, and both the manifold and the tangent: spaces are m=d(d+1)/2 dimensional. 
     For symmetric matrices, the conventional matrix exponential and logarithm operators can be determined as follows. As is well known, an eigenvalue decomposition of a symmetric matrix is Σ=UDU T . The exponential series is 
                       exp   ⁡     (   ∑   )       =         ∑     k   =   0     ∞     ⁢           ⁢       ∑   k       k   !         =     U   ⁢           ⁢     exp   ⁡     (   D   )       ⁢     U   T           ,           (   7   )               
where exp(D) is the diagonal matrix of the eigenvalue exponentials. Similarly, the logarithm is
 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
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     The exponential operator is always defined, whereas the logarithms only exist for symmetric matrices with positive eigenvalues, Sym +   d . From the definition of the geodesic given above, the distance between two points on Sym +   d  is measured by substituting Equation (6) into Equation (4) 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     
                       
                         
                           
                             
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     We note that an equivalent form of the affine invariant distance metric can be given in terms of the joint eigenvalues of X and Y. 
     We define an orthogonal coordinate system on the tangent space with the vector operation. The orthogonal coordinates of a vector y on the tangent space at point X is given by a mapping vector 
                         vec   X     ⁡     (   y   )       =     upper   ⁡     (       X     -     1   2         ⁢     yX     -     1   2           )         ,           (   10   )               
where the upper operator refers to the vector form of the upper triangular part of the matrix. The mapping vec x , relates the Riemannian metric of Equation (4) on the tangent space to the canonical metric defined in  .
 
     Intrinsic Mean Covariance Matrices 
     We improve classification accuracy by determining the intrinsic mean covariance matrix  121 . Covariance matrices do not conform to Euclidean geometry. Therefore, we use elliptical or Riemannian geometry. Several methods are known for determining the mean of symmetric positive definite (Hermitian) matrices, such as our covariance matrices (high-level features  301 ), see Pennec et at, “A Riemannian framework for tensor computing,” In Intl. J. of Computer Vision, volume 66, pages 41-66, January 2006, incorporated herein by reference. 
     A set of points on a Riemannian manifold   is {X i } i=1 . . . N . Similar to Euclidean spaces, the Karcher mean of the points on Riemannian manifold is the point on the manifold   that minimizes the sum of squared distances 
                     μ   =     arg   ⁢           ⁢       min     Y   ∈   ℳ       ⁢       ∑     i   =   1     N     ⁢           ⁢       d   2     ⁡     (       X   i     ,   Y     )               ,           (   11   )               
which m our case is the distance metric d 2  of Equation (9).
 
     Differentiating the error function with respect to Y and setting it equal to zero, yields 
                       μ     i   +   1       =       exp     μ   t       ⁡     [       1   N     ⁢       ∑     i   =   1     N     ⁢           ⁢       log     μ   t       ⁡     (     X   i     )           ]         ,           (   12   )               
which can locate a local minimum of the error function using a gradient descent procedure. The method iterates by determining first order approximations to the mean on the tangent space. We replace the inside of the exponential, i.e., the mean of the tangent vectors, with the weighted mean
 
     
       
         
           
             
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       FIG. 5  shows the selecting step  110  and determining step  120  in greater detail. The intrinsic mean covariance matrix  121  obtained  500  as follows. For a given window  320  and the high-level features  301  therein, a subset of the covariance matrices (high-level features  301 ) is selected  510 . A matrix  521  is selected  520  from the subset  111 . The selected matrix  521  is assigned  530  as a current reference matrix. 
     A mean logarithm with respect to the current reference matrix is determined  540 . A weighted sum is determined  550 . The weighted sum is compared  560  to the reference matrix, and a change score is determined  570 . If the change score is greater than some small threshold ε (Y), then a next matrix is selected and assigned. 
     Otherwise if not (N), the reference matrix is assigned  590  as the intrinsic mean covariance matrix  121 . The intrinsic mean covariance matrix can now be used to map each high-level feature  301  to a corresponding feature vector  131 . The feature vectors are used to train the classifier model  410 . 
     Classification on Riemannian Manifolds 
     A training set of class labels is {(X i , y i )} i=1 . . . N , where X ∈   and y 1  ∈ {0, 1}. We want to find a function F(X):   {0, 1}, which partitions the manifold into two based on the training set of class labels. 
     Such a function, which partitions the manifold, is a complicated notion compared to a similar partitioning in the Euclidean space. For example, consider the simplest form a linear classifier  . A point and a direction vector on   define a line that partitions  into the two parts. Equivalently, on a two-dimensional differentiable manifold, we can consider a point on the manifold and a tangent vector on the tangent space of the point, which define a curve on the manifold via an exponential map. For example, if we consider the image of the lines on a 2D-torus, then the curve can never partition the manifold into two parts. 
     One method for classification maps the manifold to a higher dimensional Euclidean space, which can be considered as flattening the manifold. However in a general case, there is no such mapping that globally preserves the distances between the points on the manifold. Therefore, a classifier trained on the flattened space does not reflect the global structure of the points. 
     Classifiers 
       FIGS. 4A-4B  show alternative embodiments for training the classifier  601 .  FIG. 4A  shows a single classifier method.  FIGS. 4B-4C  show a boosted classifier method.  FIG. 4D  shows a margin cascade boosted classifier method. 
     Single Classifier 
     As shown in  FIG. 4A  for the single classifier  601  is trained as follows. The intrinsic mean covariance matrix is determined  120  from the high-level features  103 . The high-level features  301  are projected  412  on a tangent space using the intrinsic mean covariance matrix  121  to map the high-level features. Unique coefficients of the matrix, after the projection, is reconstructed  620  as the feature vector  131 . Using a selected classifier model  410  from available classifier models, the selected classifier is then trained using the feature vectors  131 . 
     Boosted Classifier 
       FIG. 4B  shows the steps for training a boosted classifier. A subset  111  of the high-level features  103  is selected  110 . The intrinsic mean covariance matrix is determined  120  from the selected subset of high-level features  111 . These features are used to train  600  a selected single classifier to produce a trained classifier  601 . 
     The trained classifier is applied  422  to a portion of the training data  102 , and a performance  125  of the classifier can be determined  424 . If the performance is acceptable, then the classifier is added  426  to the set of classifiers  401 . 
     Additional classifiers can then be evaluated, via step  428 , until the desired number of classifiers have been accumulated in the set of classifiers  401 . It should be noted, that a different subset of the high-level features can be selected for each classifier to be trained. In this case, an intrinsic mean covariance matrix is determined for each selected subset of high-level features. 
     For the boosting, the set of classifiers  401  can be further evaluated as shown in  FIG. 4C . Using the performance data  425 , a best classifier  431  is selected  430 . The best classifier  431  is applied  432  to a portion of the training data  102  and a cumulative performance  435  is determined  434 . If the cumulative performance  435  is less than a predetermined target performance, in step  436 , then the weights of the training data are updated  438 , and another classifier can be trained. Otherwise, the training of the boosted classifier is done  439 . 
     We describe an incremental approach by training several weak classifiers on the tangent space and combining the weak classifiers through boosting. We start by defining mappings from neighborhoods on the manifold to the Euclidean space, similar to coordinate charts. Our maps are the logarithm maps, log X , that map the neighborhood of points X to the tangent spaces T X . Because this mapping is a homeomorphism around the neighborhood of the point, the structure of the manifold is preserved locally. The tangent space is a vector space, and we train the classifiers on this space. The classifiers can be trained on the tangent space at any point on the manifold. The mean of the points minimizes the sum of squared distances on the manifold. Therefore, the mean is a good approximation up to a first order, 
     During each iteration, we determine the weighted mean of the points, where the weights are adjusted through boosting. We map the points to the tangent space at the mean and train a weak classifier on this vector space. Because the weights of the samples, which are misclassified during earlier stages of boosting increase, the weighted mean moves towards these points producing more accurate classifiers for these points. This approach minimizes the approximation error through averaging over several weak classifiers. 
     LogitBoost on Riemannian Manifolds 
     We start with brief description of the conventional LogitBoost method on vector spaces, J. Friedman, T. Hastie, and R. Tibshirani, “Additive logistic regression: A statistical view of boosting,” Ann. Statist., 28(2):337-407, 2000, incorporated herein by reference. 
     We consider the binary classification problem, y i  ∈ {0, 1}. The probability of the point x being in class 1 is represented by 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
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     The LogitBoost method trains the set of regression functions {ƒ l (x)} l=1 . . . L  (weak functions) by minimizing the negative binomial log-likelihood of the data l(y, p(x)) as 
                   -       ∑     i   =   1     N     ⁢           ⁢     [         y   i     ⁢     log   ⁡     (     p   ⁡     (     x   i     )       )         +       (     1   -     y   i       )     ⁢     log   ⁡     (     1   -     p   ⁡     (     x   i     )         )           ]               (   14   )               
through Newton iterations. The LogitBoost method fits a weighted least square regression, ƒ l (x) of training points (features) x i  ∈   to response values z i  ∈   with weights w i .
 
     Our LogitBoost method on Riemannian manifolds is different to the conventional LogitBoost at the level of weak functions. In our method, the domains of the weak functions are in   such that ƒ l (X):  . Following the description above, we train the regression functions in the tangent space at the weighted mean of the points on the manifold. We define the weak functions as
 
ƒ l ( X )= g   i ( vec   μ     l    (log  μ     l    ( X )))   (15),
 
and train the functions g l (x):  , and the weighted mean of the points μ l  ∈  . Notice that, the mapping vector of Equation (10) gives the orthogonal coordinates of the tangent vectors.
 
     Pseudo-code for the method is shown in  FIG. 7 . The steps marked with (*) are different from the conventional LogitBoost method. For functions {g l } l=1 . . . L , is possible to use any form of weighted least squares regression such as linear functions, regression stumps, etc., because the domains of the functions are in  . 
     Input is a training set of class labels is {(X i , y i )} i=1 . . . N , where X ∈   and y i  ∈ {0, 1}, and we start with weights w i . Then, we repeat l=1 . . . L the following steps. We compute the response values z i  and weights w i . Then, we compute the weighted mean of the points μ l . We map the data points to the tangent space at μ l . We fit the function g(x) by the weighted least-square regression of z i  to x i  using weights w i , and update F(X) where ƒ l  is defined in Equation (15) and p(X) is defined in Equation (13). The method outputs the classifier sign 
     
       
         
           
             
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     Boosted Classifier with Adjustable Margin 
     For a margin cascade classifier as shown in  FIGS. 4D and 4E , a probabilistic classifier model  441  is used to train  440  a strong boosted classifier using the high-level features  301 , as described above. The strong trained boosted classifier is then applied  442  to a portion of the training data.  102 . 
     Positive and negative samples of the training data are ordered  443  according to their probabilities to obtain two lists; a positive list for positive samples and a negative list for the negative samples. 
     Then, the probability of the particular positive example in the positive list that corresponds to the positive detection rate is obtained. This positive sample is assigned as the current positive probability. Similarly, the current negative probability is found using the negative list and the negative detection rate. 
     Then, the current negative probability is subtracted  444  from the current positive probability to obtain a current gap. A classifier decision threshold is set  453  to the half of the summations of the current positive and current negative probabilities, see  FIG. 4E  described below in greater detail. Two cost factors are defined. A cost of not missing any positive samples (CP)  451 , and cost of minimizing false positive samples (CFP)  452 . A margin  448  for classification is set by a user or adjusted based on the detection performance of the classifiers in the cascade. 
     The margin is used to determine the classifier decision threshold, using the gap and probabilities of target detection and rejection rates  454 , based on a target margin  448 , and target detection and rejection rates  449 . The result can be used to remove  446  true negative samples from the training data  101 , and to add  447  false positives as negative training data. 
     Adjusting the Margin 
     A size of the margin determines the speed and accuracy of the classifier. If the margin is large, in step  455 , based on the CP and CFP costs, then the speed is fast, but the results can be less accurate. Decreasing the size of the margin, slows down the classification but increases the accuracy of the results. If it is desired to not miss any positive samples, then the threshold is shifted  456  towards the negative samples, i.e., the threshold is decreased. If it is desired to not detect any false positive samples, then the threshold is shifted  457  towards positive samples away from the negative training samples, i.e., the threshold value is increased. 
     We repeat adding  426  classifiers to the boosted classifier, as described above, until the current gap is greater than the margin in step  445 . 
     Cascade of Rejectors 
     We employ a cascade of rejectors and a boosting framework to increase the speed of classification process. Each rejector is a strong classifier, and consists of a set of weighted linear weak classifiers as described above. The number of weak classifiers at each rejector is determined by the target true and false positive rates. Each weak classifier corresponds to a high-dimensional feature and it splits the high dimensional input space with a decision boundary (hyper plane, etc). Each weak classifier makes its estimation based on a single high-dimensional feature from the bag of high-dimensional features. Boosting works by sequentially fitting weak classifiers to reweighted versions of the training data. Using Gentle-Boost, we fit an additive logistic regression model by stage-wise optimization of the Bernoulli log-likelihood. 
     Human Detection using Cascade of Rejectors 
       FIG. 8  shows one embodiment of our cascaded classifier. For human detection we combine, e.g., K=30, of our LogitBoost classifiers  801  on Sym +   8  with a rejection cascade. The weak classifiers {g l } l=1 . . . L  are linear regression functions trained on the tangent space of Sym +   8 . The tangent space is an m+36 dimensional vector space. Let N pi  and N ni  be the number of positive and negative images in the training set. Because any detection region or window sampled from a negative image is a negative sample, it is possible to generate more negative examples than the number of negative images. 
     Assume that we are training the k th  cascade level. We classify all the possible detection regions on the negative training images with the cascade of the previous (k−1) classifiers. The samples m, which are misclassified, form the possible negative set (samples classified as positive). Because the cardinality of the possible negative set is very large, we sample N n =10000 examples from this set as the negative examples at cascade level k. At every cascade level, we consider all the positive training images as the positive training set. There is a single human at each of the positive images, so N p =N pi . 
     A very large number of covariance descriptors can be determined from a single detection region. It is computationally intractable to test all of the descriptors. At each boosting iterations of the k th  LogitBoost level, we sample 200 subregions among all the possible subregions, and construct normalized covariance descriptors as described above. We train the weak classifiers representing each subregion, and add the best classifier which minimizes negative binomial log-likelihood to the cascade level k. 
     Each level of cascade detector is optimized to correctly detect at least 99.8% of the positive examples, while rejecting at least 35% of the negative examples. In addition, we enforce a margin constraint between the positive samples and the decision boundary. The probability of a sample being positive at cascade level k is p k (X), evaluated using Equation (13). 
     The positive example that has the (0.998N p ) th  largest probability among all the positive examples is X p . The negative example that has the (0.35N n ) th  smallest probability among ail the negative examples X n . We continue to add weak classifiers to cascade level k p k (X p )−p k (X n )&gt;th b . We se the threshold th b =0.2. 
     When the constraint is satisfied, a new sample is classified as positive by cascade level k if p k (X)&gt;p k (X p )−th b &gt;p k (X n ) or equivalently F k (X)&gt;F k (X n ). With our method, any of the positive training samples in the top 99.8 percentile have at least th b  more probability than the decision boundary. The process continues with the training of (k+1) th  cascade level, until k=K. 
     This method is a modification of our LogitBoost classifier on Riemannian manifolds described above. We determine the weighted means of only the positive examples, because the negative set is not well characterized for detection tasks. Although it rarely happens, if some of the features are totally correlated, there will be singularities in the covariance descriptor. We ignore those eases by adding very small identity matrix to the covariance descriptor. 
     Object Detection with Motion Cues in Covariance Descriptors 
       FIG. 6  shows a procedure for determining high-level features from motion cues according to an embodiment of the invention. The features can be used for training a classifier as described herein, and for object detection. 
     Covariance descriptors, which we adapt for object detection in images according to embodiments of our invention, can also include motion cues that are extracted from the video data. The motion cues can be provided by another sensor, or can be determined by analyzing the video data itself. The pixel-wise object motion information is incorporated as a low-level feature. 
     In case of system with a moving camera, the apparent motion in the video can be due to object and/or camera motion. Therefore, we use a first training video 13    601  from moving camera, and a second training video_ 2   602  from a static camera. 
     The camera motion in the first training video  601  is compensated  610  to obtain the motion due to the objects only. This is done by stabilizing or aligning the consecutive video images. Image alignment gives the camera motion either as a parametric (affine, perspective, etc.) global motion model, or as a non-parametric dense motion field. In both cases, the consecutive images are aligned. This results in stabilized images  611 . Using the stabilized images,  611  the moving objects in the scene are found as the regions that have high motion after the compensation step  611 . 
     For static camera systems, there is no camera motion in the second video  602 . Thus, no compensation is required. Any motion present is due to object motion. Therefore, we generate and maintain  660  a statistical background model  662 . 
     We use different motion cues. A motion cue is an additional low-level feature when we determine the high-level features  300 . 
     A first set of motion, cues is obtained from a foreground  661 . Using the input images (stabilized images  611  in case of moving cameras), the background model  662  is maintained  660 . The changed part of the scene, which is called the foreground  661 , is determined by comparing and subtracting  665  the current image  666  from the background models  660 . A foreground pixel value corresponds to the distance between the current image pixel and the background models for that pixel. This distance can be thresholded. We use these pixel-wise distances as a first set of motion cues. 
     A second set of motion cues is obtained by the consecutive image differences  620 . A number of difference images  621  are determined by subtracting the current image from one or multiple of the previous images, that are the motion compensated (stabilized) images  611  in case of a moving camera system. The subtraction gives the intensity distance at a pixel. Instead of the intensity distance, other distances, for instance, gradient magnitude distance, orientation difference, can also used. 
     A third set of motion features is computed by determining  650  an optical flow  651  between the current and previous (stabilized) images  611 . The optical flow determination produces a motion vector at every pixel. The motion vectors, which include the vertical and horizontal components of the optical flow vector, or the magnitude and orientation angles of the optical flow vector, are then assigned as the pixel-wise motion cues. Alternatively, a motion vector for each pixel is determined by block-matching or other methods instead of the optical flow. 
     For moving object detection, we include the motion cues among the low-level features in the aforementioned mapping function Φ(I, x, y). The low-level feature can be used to generate 300 high-level features as described above. Then, the high-level features obtained from training data can be used to train the classifier  601 , while the high-level features obtained in a similar manner from test data can be used to detect moving objects using the trained classifier. 
     Testing 
     During classification  140  of test data  104 , low-level features are extracted and used to generate high-level features, as described above. The high-level features are eventually mapped to feature vectors, as described above, for classification  140 . The classification assigns the labels  105  to the test data  104 , e.g. human or not. 
     Although, the invention has been described by way of examples of preferred embodiments, it is to be understood that various other adaptations and modifications can be made within the spirit and scope of the invention. Therefore, it is the object of the appended claims to cover all such variations and modifications as come within the true spirit and scope of the invention. 
     Effect of the Invention 
     The embodiments of the invention provide a method for detecting humans in images utilizing covariance matrices as object descriptors and a training method the Riemannian manifolds. The method is not specific to Sym +   d , and can be used to train classifiers for points lying on any connected Riemannian manifold. 
     Although the invention has been described by way of examples of preferred embodiments, it is to be understood that various other adaptations and modifications can be made within the spirit and scope of the invention. Therefore, it is the object of the appended claims to cover all such variations and modifications as come within the true spirit and scope of the invention.