Patent ID: 7885467

Claim:
A method for locating objects in an image containing at least one object to be located, comprising: obtaining an image comprising a plurality of pixels having image values; segmenting the plurality of pixels of the obtained image into a plurality of connected pixel components, each connected pixel component comprising a subset of the plurality of pixels; locating, for each of at least some of the connected pixel components, at least one linear feature, each located linear feature representative of at least one spatial parameter of that connected pixel component; analyzing the located linear features at least to identify pairs of located linear features that are co-linear; analyzing a set of linear elements to identify pairs of spatially-related linear elements, the set of linear elements comprising at least the linear features of at least one identified pair of co-linear located linear features; identifying subsets of spatially-related located linear features based on the identified pairs of spatially-related linear elements, each identified subset comprising at least two spatially-related located linear features; generating, for each identified subset of spatially-related located linear features, a combined connected pixel component from the connected pixel components represented by the spatially-related located linear features of that identified subset; and determining, for each combined connected pixel component, at least one linear feature for that combined connected pixel component, wherein the at least one linear feature for that combined connected pixel component is representative of one of the objects to be located in the image.