Patent ID: 7245315

Claim:
A method of detecting fire and non-fire conditions, comprising: receiving a plurality of frames of video information; determining an energy indicator for each of a subset of the plurality of frames to provide energy indicators as a function of time; determining a pattern formed by the energy indicators as a function of time for a defined period of time, wherein said pattern is formed by an energy indicator for each of the frames in the subset at a different time in said defined period, wherein said determining includes calculating an energy difference for each of a plurality of pixels, i, j, in each of said frames of the subset, and wherein said energy difference associated with said each pixel, i, j, is determined using a difference between brightness of said each pixel, i, j, of said each frame and brightness of a corresponding pixel, i, j, of a reference frame; detecting a fire condition in response to the pattern formed by the energy indicators corresponding to a fire condition; and detecting a non-fire condition in response to the pattern formed by the energy indicators corresponding to a non-fire condition.