Abstract: A method of improving recognition of a particular person in images by constructing a composite model of at least the portion of the head of that particular person, includes acquiring a collection of images taken during a particular event; identifying image(s) having a particular person in the collection; identifying one or more features in the identified image(s) associated with that particular person; searching the collection using the identified features to identify the particular person in other images of the collection; and constructing a composite model of at least a portion of the particular person's head using identified images of the particular person.

Abstract: A method is disclosed for retrieving images relevant to an example image from among a plurality of stored images, each of the stored images being associated with metadata of different types, including retrieving set(s) of images from the stored image(s) for each different type of metadata that are based on similarities of the metadata of each different type with the example image; displaying the retrieved set(s) of image(s) organized according to each different type of metadata; and the user selecting one or more particular set(s) of retrieved image(s).

Abstract: A method of organizing an image collection includes detecting faces in the image collection, extracting features from the detected faces, determining a set of unique faces by analyzing the extracted features, wherein each face in the set of unique faces is believed to be from a different person than the other faces in the set; and displaying the unique faces to a user.

Abstract: A method for generating customized photo album pages for a collection of digital images comprises the steps of: (a) obtaining a plurality of digital images; (b) automatically grouping the images into one or more image sets based on at least one of grouping by events and grouping by people present in the images; (c) automatically profiling the images within each image set according to image content, thereby relating a particular image set to one or more design themes; (d) providing a database of design elements that may be used to generate customized photo album pages; (e) utilizing the design themes generated by the profiling step to automatically suggest one or more design elements from the database of design elements; and (f) automatically generating a customized photo album page layout for each image set by applying one or more of the suggested design elements to the page layout.

Abstract: A method of identifying a particular background feature in a digital image, and using such feature to identify images in a collection of digital images that are of interest, includes using the digital image for determining one or more background region(s), with the rest of the image region being the non-background region; analyzing the background region(s) to determine one or more features which are suitable for searching the collection; and using the one or more features to search the collection and identifying those digital images in the collection that have the one or more features.

Abstract: A method of identifying a particular person in a digital image collection, wherein at least one of the images in the digital image collection contains more than one person, includes providing at least one first label for a first image in the digital image collection containing a particular person and at least one other person; wherein the first label identifies the particular person and a second label for a second image in the digital image collection that identifies the particular person; using the first and second labels to identify the particular person; determining features related to the particular person from the first image or second image or both; and using such particular features to identify another image in the digital image collection believed to contain the particular person.

Abstract: Additional records are combined into a database of earlier-entered records clustered into existing events. A common chronology of a set of the existing events in the database and the additional records is determined based upon respective date-times of origination. Relative proportions of the earlier-entered and additional records in the database are ascertained. The following are identified in the chronology: existing events immediately preceding, concurrent with, and immediately succeeding additional records. When the relative proportions are beyond a predetermined reuse threshold, all of the records of the set and the additional records are reclustered into new events independent of the existing events. When the relative proportions are within the predetermined reuse threshold, only the identified records are reclustered with the additional records.

Abstract: A method of identifying at least one particular person of interest in a collection of digital images taken over time, includes providing the collection of digital images with each digital image containing one or more persons; storing in a digital database an appearance model having a set of features that are distance measurements associated with facial features of the particular person of interest at an associated time; and providing an individual recognition classifier that uses the appearance model and the associated time to identify the particular person of interest in images from the collection of digital images.

Abstract: A database has chronologically ordered images classified into event groups based upon a time difference threshold, and into subgroups based upon a similarity measure. In a method and system for combining new images into such a database, new image are ordered into clusters based upon assessed image features. A representative image is selected in each cluster. A database segment chronologically overlapping the new images is designated and a set of database images similar to each representative image are identified in the segment. Different subgroups including one or more retrieved images are associated with each of cluster to provide matched subgroups. The new images are assigned to matched subgroups associated with respective clusters.

Abstract: A method for generating customized photo album pages for a collection of digital images comprises the steps of: (a) obtaining a plurality of digital images; (b) automatically grouping the images into one or more image sets based on at least one of grouping by events and grouping by people present in the images; (c) automatically profiling the images within each image set according to image content, thereby relating a particular image set to one or more design themes; (d) providing a database of design elements that may be used to generate customized photo album pages; (e) utilizing the design themes generated by the profiling step to automatically suggest one or more design elements from the database of design elements; and (f) automatically generating a customized photo album page layout for each image set by applying one or more of the suggested design elements to the page layout.

Abstract: A method of organizing images of human faces in digital images into clusters, comprising the steps of: locating images of human faces in the digital images using a face detector; extracting the located human face images from the digital images; and forming clusters of the extracted human face images, each cluster representing an individual using a face recognizer.

Abstract: A system for organizing digital videos to archive and access them at different levels of abstraction uses data available from a closed-caption text along with off-the-shelf natural language processing tools to segment the video into self-contained story sections and speaker blocks. If the subject changes are marked, the system uses these points to divide the video into distinct stories which are represented as nodes attached to the root node in a tree structure and groups speaker segments belonging to a story under the story node as its children.

Abstract: The present invention is directed to a system and method for comprehensively generating summaries of digital videos at various lengths and in different formats. In one aspect, the system analyzes closed-caption test to find summary sentence(s) for each story in the video, which are ordered in terms of their selection order. Upon selecting a presentation format, a set of images, video clips or an already-prepared video summary for each story is found. Text-to-speech tools can then be used to audit the summary sentences or capture the audio clips from the video with respect to the summary sentences.

Abstract: A system for interactively organizing and browsing video automatically processes video, creating a video table of contents (VTOC), while providing easy-to-use interfaces for verification, correction, and augmentation of the automatically extracted video structure. Shot detection, shot grouping and VTOC generation are automatically determined without making restrictive assumptions about the structure or content of the video. A nonstationary time series model of difference metrics is used for shot boundary detention. Color and edge similarities are used for shot grouping. Observation about the structure of a wide class of videos are used for the generating the table of contents. The use of automatic processing in conjuction with input from the user provides a meaningful video organization.