Patent ID: 7720269

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for determining a volume of interest in data comprising: determining, by a processor, fixed-bandwidth estimations of a plurality of analysis bandwidths, wherein the estimation of the fixed-bandwidth comprises, providing an estimate of a mode location of the volume of interest in the data, and determining a covariance of the volume of interest using a local Hessian matrix, comprising determining a scale-space representation of the volume of interest; determining a scale-space Hessian of the volume of interest at the mode location given the scale-space representation; and determining the covariance of the volume of interest from the scale-space Hessian, wherein the covariance defines a boundary of the volume of interest around the mode location, wherein the covariance is determined based on a truncated Gaussian fitted to the volume of interest, the truncated Gaussian comprising a plurality of arbitrarily missing tails; and determining, by the processor, the volume of interest as a most stable fixed-bandwidth estimation across each of the plurality of analysis bandwidths.