Patent ID: 7099504

Claim:
A face detection method comprising: making a first pass over an image patch using only one reduced set vector of a number of possible reduced set vectors; ascertaining from said first pass, whether the image patch can be classified as a non-face; classifying the image patch as a non-face, if the image patch can be classified using the one reduced set vector; if the image patch cannot be classified as a non-face using the one reduced set vector: making at least one additional pass over the image patch using at least one additional reduced set vector; and ascertaining from said at least one additional pass, whether the image patch can be classified as a non-face; and if the image patch cannot be classified as a non-face using said at least one additional reduced set vector, continuing to make additional passes over the patch using additional reduced set vectors until either: (1) the image patch can be classified as a non-face, or (2) there are no additional reduced set vectors to use.