Patent ID: 8019170

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a video frame of a video sequence from a video sensor; generating sensor statistics for the video sensor using skin color reflectance spectra of the video sensor; detecting skin regions within the video frame based on the sensor statistics; generating a skin map of the video frame based on the detected skin regions; receiving the skin map by a region of interest (ROI) detector from a skin region detector; receiving motion information for the video frame and a different video frame of the video sequence by the ROI detector; selecting an automatic ROI detection mode from at least a first ROI detection mode and a second ROI detection mode by a ROI detection controller, based on the quality of the skin map and on the sensor statistics; if the first ROI detection mode is selected, automatically detecting a ROI within the video frame based on locations of macroblocks in the video frame relative to the skin map of the video frame, and without reference to the motion information for the different video frame, by the ROI detector; and if the second ROI detection mode is selected, automatically detecting a ROI within the video frame based on locations of macroblocks in the video frame relative to the skin map of the video frame and a ROI within the different video frame by the ROI detector.