Systems and methods for privacy protection in video communication systems

An image transmission system with privacy protection comprising:

• a privacy request processor, the privacy request processor receiving a request to secure at least one object type in an image prior to transmission of the image to a receiving system;
• a camera generating image data;
• an object detector receiving the image data from the camera and processing the image data to identify at least one predetermined object type in the image data;
• an object scrambler, the object scrambler receiving a set of protected objects from the privacy request processor and receiving the image data with identified objects of the predetermined object type, the object scrambler obscuring the image data for any identified objects identified as protected objects;
• and
• an encoder, the encoder receiving the image data with obscured protected objects and generating encoded bitstream therefrom, the encoded bitstream includes frame level parameters related to the applied privacy protection used to obscure the image data, wherein the frame level parameters include a frame level flag indicating whether the bitstream provides privacy protection for a frame, the frame level parameters further including one or more of the number of object classes protected, names of the object classes protected, number of objects in each class protected.