US Patent 7113201 Image processing apparatus

Image data from a plurality of cameras 2-1, 2-2, 2-3 showing the movements of a number of people, for example in a meeting, and sound data from a directional microphone array 4 is processed by a computer processing apparatus 24 to archive the data in a meeting archive database 60. The image data is processed to determine the three-dimensional position and orientation of each person's head and to determine at whom each person is looking. The sound data is processed to determine the direction from which the sound came. Processing is carried out to determine who is speaking by determining which person has his head in a position corresponding to the direction from which the sound came. Having determined which person is speaking, the personal speech recognition parameters for that person are selected and used to convert the sound data to text data. Image data to be archived is chosen by selecting the camera which best shows the speaking participant and the participant to whom he is speaking. Image data, sound data, text data and data defining at whom each person is looking is stored in the meeting archive database 60.