Systems and methods for motion detection of human skin within temporally adjacent electronic images are provided. Motion detection is accomplished by analyzing the color values of selected pixels within the electronic images represented in CbCr color space. Histogram distributions which represent skin colors and non-skin colors in CbCr color space are modeled in order to provide likelihoods that a selected color value appears within the histogram distributions. Posterior skin probability values, indicating the probability that a selected pixel having a given CbCr color value represents human skin, are calculated from these likelihoods. For each of the selected pixels, an intensity difference of the pixel between the electronic images is compared to an adaptive intensity threshold which is a function of the posterior skin probability in order to determine whether the pixel is in motion.