1. A method for detecting an object of interest in an input image, comprising the computer-implemented steps of: receiving an image; providing a multi-class pose classifier, the multi-class pose classifier identifying a plurality of pose features for estimating a pose of an object of interest in the image; providing a plurality of cascades of serially-linked binary object feature classifiers corresponding to different poses of the object of interest in the image, each binary classifier identifying a plurality of object features associated with the object of interest, each of the classifiers in sequence in the cascade respectively having increasing accuracy in identifying the object features; selecting at least one of the cascades using the estimated pose; and employing the selected cascades to detect instances of the object of interest in the image.