Patent ID: 8467606

Claim:
A method for segmenting a composite image containing a plurality of individual images, comprising: receiving digital image data representing the composite image; using a data processor to locate line segments corresponding to edges in the composite image; defining a plurality of candidate rectangles by identifying sets of four line segments having a first pair of line segments that are parallel to within a predefined tolerance and a second pair of line segments that are perpendicular to the first pair of line segments to within a predefined tolerance; identifying image regions that are more than a predefined isolation distance from any of the line segments or that are more than a predefined isolation distance from the any of the candidate rectangles; identifying a set of enclosing rectangles from among the candidate rectangles for each of the identified image regions; selecting a rectangle for each of the identified image regions from the corresponding set of enclosing rectangles by applying geometric constraints; forming a plurality of sub-images from the composite image by extracting the digital image data corresponding to the selected rectangles; and storing the sub-images in a processor-accessible memory.