System and method for determining the presence of objects in an image

The techniques used process pixel data within the image by a relatively small number of pixel rows at a time. The angle and magnitude date from the pixels within an image are redistributed into a plurality histogram of magnitude bins associated with groupings of pixels. Once enough groupings of pixels equivalent to the height of a Block worth of pixels have been made, partial Support Vector Machine (SVM) calculations are performed on that Block worth of pixels. This is repeated until there are sufficient partial results equivalent to the height of the feature window, and then a full SVM calculation is performed. This process then may be used to scan across the whole image to determine the presence of objects within it.