Surveillance systems may be found in both private and public spaces. In private spaces, they can be designed to help provide and monitor secure premises. Similarly, public spaces may also use surveillance systems to determine an allocation of public resources. A camera surveillance system according to an embodiment of the invention uses advanced image processing techniques to determine whether an object moving across a scene is a person. The camera surveillance system achieves an accurate and efficient classification by selectively processing a set of features associated with the object, such as features that define an omega shape. By selectively processing the set of features associated with the object, the methods and systems described herein reduce the computational complexity of standard image processing/object detection techniques.