Patent ID: 8335355

Claim:
A digital image acquisition device, including a lens, an image sensor and a processor, and having an operating system including a component embodied within a processor-readable medium for programming the processor to perform an image recognition method a) training a plurality of image classifiers, including: for a plurality of images in the collection, identifying one or more regions corresponding to a face region; for each image identified as having multiple face regions, for each of a plurality of image classifiers, determining combination feature vectors corresponding to the multiple face regions; and storing said combination feature vectors in association with certain recognizable data relating to at least one of the multiple face regions, and b) retrieving a sub-set of images from said collection or a different collection that includes one or more images including both a face associated with certain recognizable data and a second face, or a subset of said collection, or a combination thereof, including: selecting from said plurality of image classifiers at least one classifier on which said retrieving is to be based, said at least one classifier being configured for programming the processor to select images containing at least two reference face regions including a first face to be recognized and a second face; determining, for said at least two reference face regions, a respective feature vector for one or more selected classifiers; and retrieving said sub-set of images from within said collection or said different collection that includes one or more images including both said face associated with certain recognizable data and said second face, or said subset of said collection, or said combination thereof, in accordance with the distance between the feature vectors determined for said reference region and the feature vectors for face regions of said image collection; and wherein said determining comprises: a) for each face region, extracting respective features representative of the region; b) for each of said plurality of image classifiers, determining respective basis vectors according to said extracted features; and c) for the extracted features for each region, for each classifier, determining said feature vectors, based on each determined basis vector.