1. A method of identifying a false positive in a candidate detection, the method comprising the steps of: extracting binary contours of a potential object within the candidate detection to form an extracted edge map; matching a local part contour set to the extracted edge map; refining a set of sampling windows based on the matched local part contour set; composing a global foreground mask from the extracted edge map; computing gradient directions for a subset of the area of the candidate detection that correlates with the set of refined sampling windows and the global foreground mask; and determining, from the gradient directions, whether the candidate detection is a false positive.