Abstract: A video communication system, for example, video surveillance and video conferencing, is disclosed in which regions of interest of video scenes are scrambled to protect privacy and/or allow anonymous participation. The regions of interest may be arbitrary and selectable by the participant or user, such as the face of the participant. Initially, the video content is analyzed to locate an arbitrary shape of interest, such as a human face or part of a human body. Once the region of interest is located, it is scrambled, for example, in conjunction with two well known video coding schemes; MPEG-4 and Motion JPEG-2000. The arbitrary regions can be scrambled in the transform-domain during coding and reversibly encrypted to allow authorized users to decrypt and decode the regions of interest.

Abstract: A video communication system is disclosed which allows one or more of the participants to selectively participate anonymously by scrambling regions of the video of arbitrary shape, such as the face of the participant. Initially, the video content is analyzed to locate an arbitrary shape of interest, such as a human face or part of a human body. Once the region of interest is located, it is scrambled, for example, in conjunction with two well known video coding schemes; MPEG-4 and Motion JPEG-2000. The arbitrary regions can be scrambled in the image-domain prior to coding, in the transform-domain during coding, or in the bit stream domain after coding.