Patent ID: 7555165

Claim:
A method for scene classification of a digital image comprising the steps of: (a) extracting one or more pre-determined camera metadata tags from the digital image; (b) generating an estimate of image class of the digital image based on (1) the extracted camera metadata tags and not (2) image content features using a first data processing path, thereby providing a metadata-based estimate based only on the extracted camera metadata tags or generating a metadata null estimate; (c) generating, separately from the metadata-based estimate, another estimate of image class of the digital image based on (1) image content features and not (2) the extracted camera metadata tags using a second data processing path separate from the first data processing path, thereby providing an image content-based estimate based only the image content features or generating a content-based null estimate; and (d) producing a final integrated estimate of image class of the digital image using a Bayesian network based on a combination of 1) the metadata-based estimate and the image content-based estimate, 2) the metadata-based estimate and the image-based null estimate, or 3) the image content-based estimate and the metadata null estimate; wherein steps (b), (c) and (d) are each implemented using a computing device.