Patent ID: 8520893

Claim:
A method of detecting an object in an image, the method comprising: selecting, using a processor, a macroscopic scan mode for a small number of divided regions or a microscopic scan mode for a large number of divided regions according to a complexity of a background including an object to be detected; dividing, using a processor, an input image into one or more regions according to the selected scan mode, wherein the dividing process comprises determining whether or not there is a non-uniform region in previously divided regions and continuously and hierarchically dividing the non-uniform region until all of the divided regions are determined to have a uniform characteristic; merging, using a processor, adjacent regions having similar characteristics among the divided regions; extracting, using a processor, a search region from the divided or merged regions by excluding a region having a high probability that the object to be detected does not exist; extracting, using a processor, feature data including a feature vector for detecting the object in the search region; and detecting, using a processor, the object in the search region using the extracted feature data.