Patent ID: 6963425

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for locating regions of a target image that match a template image with respect to color and pattern information, the method comprising: performing a color matching search through the target image in order to find one or more candidate color match regions, wherein the candidate color match regions match the template image with respect to color information, wherein said performing the color matching search through the target image comprises: determining a plurality of sample regions at which to sample color information of the target image, wherein each sample region comprises a portion of the target image; for each of the plurality of sample regions, determining a measure of difference between the color information of the sample region and color information of the template image; for each of the plurality of sample regions, designating the sample region as a candidate color match region if the measure of difference between the color information of the sample region and the color information of the template image is smaller than a threshold value; for each candidate color match region found in the color matching search, performing a pattern matching search of a proximal region proximal to the color match region in order to find one or more match regions in the target image; wherein the one or more match regions found in the pattern matching search of each proximal region match the template image with respect to color and pattern information.