Patent ID: 7620205

Claim:
A method for generating Pairwise Active Appearance Models (PAAMs) that characterize shape, appearance and motion of an object comprising the steps of: a) receiving a plurality of video streams, each video stream comprising a series of image frames that depict an object in motion, each video stream including an index of identified motion phases that are associated with a motion cycle of the object; for each video stream: b) representing a shape of the object by a shape vector; c). representing an appearance of an object by an appearance vector; d) concatenating shape and appearance vectors associated at two consecutive motion phases; e). computing paired data for the concatenated shape and appearance vectors; f) repeating steps d) and e) to compute paired data for each two consecutive motion phases in the motion cycle; g) constructing a shape subspace based on the computed paired data; h). constructing an appearance subspace based on the computed paired data; i). constructing a joint subspace using a combination of the shape subspace and appearance subspace; j). generating a PAAM using the joint subspace; and k). storing the PAAM in a database.