In an embodiment, hand gestures, such as hand or finger hovering, in the proximity space of a sensing panel are detected from X-node and Y-node sensing signals indicative of the presence of a hand feature at corresponding row locations and column locations of a sensing panel. Hovering is detected by detecting the locations of maxima for a plurality of frames over a time window for a set of X-node sensing signals and for a set of Y-node sensing signals by recognizing a hovering gesture if the locations of the maxima detected vary over the plurality of frames for one of the sets of X-node and Y-node sensing signals while remaining stationary for the other of the sets of X-node and Y-node sensing signals(Y). Finger shapes are distinguished over “ghosts” generated by palm or fist features by transforming the node-intensity representation for the sensing signals into a node-distance representation, based on the distances of the detection intensities for a number of nodes under a peak for a mean point between the valleys adjacent to the peak.