Patent Document ID: 9378556
Application ID: 14261510
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A video image processing method for tracking objects, the method comprising: receiving a video image frame including video data; updating a location of at least one existing infant or adult object tracker, if processing at least one previous video image frame resulted in the previous establishment and current existence of at least one infant or adult object tracker, the updating of the location being based on the received video data; identifying regions in the video image that qualify as object detection blobs based on the video data and blob classification rules; for each identified object detection blob: determining if an existing tracker is associated with a location within the blob region; increasing an age or importance parameter value of any existing infant tracker that is the only tracker determined to be associated with a location within the object detection blob region; increasing an age or importance parameter value of any existing infant tracker that is the oldest infant tracker or is associated with the highest valued importance parameter among a plurality of existing infant trackers that are associated with a location within the object detection blob region, if the object detection blob is not associated with an existing adult tracker; initializing an infant tracker for each identified object detection blob region that is not associated with at least one existing tracker; decreasing the age or importance parameter value of any existing infant tracker associated with a location within the object detection blob region wherein the object detection blob region is also associated with an existing adult tracker or is also associated with at least one existing infant tracker having an older age or greater importance parameter value than the existing infant tracker under consideration; and promoting to adult tracker status any existing infant tracker having an age or importance parameter value above a threshold age or importance parameter value.