Substantial elimination of errors in the detection and location of overlapping human objects in an image of a playfield is achieved, in accordance with at least one aspect of the invention, by performing a predominately shape-based analysis of one or more characteristics obtained from a specified portion of the candidate non-playfield object, by positioning a human object model substantially over the specified portion of the candidate non-playfield object in accordance with information based at least in part on information from the shape-based analysis, and removing an overlapping human object from the portion of the candidate non-playfield object identified by the human object model. In one exemplary embodiment, the human object model is an ellipse whose major and minor axes are variable in relation to one or more characteristics identified from the specified portion of the candidate non-playfield object.