Patent ID: 8050466

Claim:
A consumer digital camera including a processor programmed by digital code to perform a face tracking and recognition method for working with two or more collections of facial images, the method comprising: (a) in-camera tracking of a detected face in a series of acquired digital images; (b) determining a first representation framework for a first collection of facial images; (c) storing a representation of said first collection using said first representation framework; (d) determining a modified representation framework based on statistical properties of original facial image samples of a second collection of facial images and the stored representation of the first collection; (e) combining the stored representation of the first collection and the second collection without using original facial image samples, including back-projecting the second collection into the first representation framework, combining the back-projected representation of the second collection and the stored representation of the first collection into a combined image collection (super-collection), and forward projecting the combined collection into the second representation framework; (f) storing a representation of the combined image collection (super-collection) using said modified representation framework; (g) comparing a representation of a current facial image, determined in terms of said modified representation framework, with one or more representations of facial images of the combined collection; and (h) based on the comparing, determining whether one or more of the facial images within the combined collection matches the current facial image.