Patent ID: 8494263

Claim:
An image processing system for locating skin in a source image, the image processing system comprising: a system processor; a graphics processing unit coupled to the system processor, the graphics processing unit comprising: a texture memory; and multiple parallel pixel shaders coupled to the texture memory; a system memory coupled to the system processor, the system memory comprising: a probability table comprising: a color coordinate index defining multiple color locations in the probability table; and a skin probability stored at the color locations; the source image in which to detect skin; and a skin location program comprising instructions which, when executed by the system processor, cause the image processing system to: upload the probability table as a probability texture from the system memory to the texture memory of the graphics processing unit; upload the source image as an image texture from the system memory to the texture memory of the graphics processing unit; apply a block-tree search of the source image by iteratively issuing draw calls to the graphics processing unit to initiate texture mapping based on the image texture, by the pixel shaders, of the probability texture onto progressively smaller render targets positioned within the source image; and store in the system memory skin locations at which skin pixels were found in the source image by the block-tree search.