Patent ID: 7840059

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a plurality of training images of objects; receiving an object label map for each training image, each object label map comprising a label for each image element specifying one of a plurality of object classes; accessing a dictionary of textons, each texton comprising information describing the texture of a patch of surface of an object; forming a texton map for each training image using the dictionary of textons, each texton map comprising, for each image element a label indicating a texton; for each texton map computing a plurality of feature responses by applying a different shape filter for each feature response, each shape filter comprising a bounding area defining an area of an image within which the shape filter is applied, the bounding area being movable within the image and having an area comprising ¼ to ¾ of the image area; selecting a sub-set of the shape filters used in computing the feature responses by forming a multi-class classifier to classify image elements into the object classes on the basis of at least some of the feature responses; and forming an object detection and recognition system using the selected shape filters.