Patent ID: 8326001

Claim:
A method performed by an image processor, the method comprising: processing a captured image of a face of a user seeking to access a resource by conforming a subset of the captured face image to a reference model, the reference model corresponding to a high information portion of human faces, and the high information portion including eyes and a mouth of a face depicted in a reference image, where the processing of the captured image comprises detecting a face within the captured image by identifying the eyes in an upper one third of the captured image and the mouth in a lower third of the captured image, and matching the eyes of the detected face with the eyes of the face depicted in the reference image to obtain a normalized image of the detected face; comparing the processed image to at least one target profile corresponding to a user associated with the resource, wherein the comparing of the processed image comprises obtaining a difference image of the detected face by subtracting the normalized image of the detected face from a normalized image of a target face associated with a target profile, and calculating scores of respective pixels of the difference image based on a weight defined according to proximity of the respective pixels to high information portions of the human faces, wherein the weight decreases from a maximum weight value at a mouth-level to a minimum weight value at an eyes-line; and selectively recognizing the user seeking access to the resource based on a result of the comparing.