Patent ID: 8233676

Claim:
A method for recognizing characteristics and identity of a selected human body part in order to recognize a human, the method comprising: capturing, by a computer system as a dataset an image of at least a portion of the human body having a selected human body part, the human body being shown in a sequence of video frames, the portion of the human body being distinguished thereby from a background; identifying, by the computer system, a sub-dataset corresponding to the selected body part from the dataset representing the image by subjecting the dataset to a plurality of features-based rejection tests; segmenting, by the computer system, the sub-dataset for the selected body part according to identified sub-dataset segments corresponding to selected identities; matching, by the computer system, the sub-dataset segments to said selected identities; and reporting, by the computer system, the known identities as an output to an output device; wherein said segmenting step employs active boosting, said active boosting characterized by importance weights sampling, a Kullback-Leibler confidence map, a mean-shift based region partition, and active feature selection.