Hours after a woman suffering from amnesia made a televised public plea for someone to tell her who she is, family members in Canada broke out in tears and hugs after recognising her.

Susan Dawn Allan, of Fort Frances, Ontario, disappeared earlier this month in Minnesota. Family members said they identified her after watching a videotape of her at a news conference in Orlando.

''It's her. Absolutely,'' said Darryl Allan, her brother, at his parents' home in Fort Frances. ''We just finished having a group hug. There's not a dry eye in the room.''

Police have been trying to identify Ms Allan since she wandered into an Orlando hospital two weeks ago with a severe headache.

''I hope there is someone out there who knows who I am,'' the woman dubbed Jane Doe said at a news conference yesterday as tears welled up in her eyes.

KMSP-TV in Minneapolis reported that yesterday was Ms Allan's 27th birthday.

Ms Allan was last seen on the morning of June 10 when she drove to International Falls, Minnesota. Her car was found a day later in the car park of the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.

There was nothing physically wrong with Jane Doe when she walked into Columbia Park Medical Centre on June 12, said Orlando Police Detective Barbara Bergin. She had no bruises and didn't appear to have been hit on the head. Tests showed that she hadn't been drinking or taking drugs.

She spent much of the past two weeks trying to jar her memory by watching television and reading magazines and a novel.

Amnesia cases are rare, police said. Nonetheless, detectives are convinced that Ms. Allan isn't feigning her memory loss.

''If she's acting, she needs to get a job as an actress because she has us all believing she's amnesiac,'' Ms Bergin said.-AP.