1. A computer-implemented method for use in body pose estimation, comprising: (a) obtaining training data that includes observation vector data and corresponding pose vector data for a plurality of images, wherein the observation vector data is representative of the images in observation space, and the pose vector data is representative of the same images in pose space; and (b) computing, based on the training data, a model that includes parameters of mapping from the observation space to latent space, parameters of mapping from the latent space to the pose space, and parameters of the latent space; wherein the latent space has a lower dimensionality than the observation space, and wherein the latent space has a lower dimensionality than the pose space.