Patent ID: 8135200

Claim:
A method to identify a Region Of Interest (ROI) within an image, said method comprising the steps of: providing a digital image; reading said digital image; finding one or more predetermined brightness values in said digital image; analyzing one or more lines near a plurality of outer edges of said digital image to test for values statistically close in brightness to said one or more found brightness values; identifying an entire area of said digital image as said ROI if said found brightness values are also found in said one or more lines near said plurality of outer edges of said digital image; computing two or more Radon transforms to generate two or more one dimensional (1D) projections of said digital image if said found brightness values are not found in said one or more lines near the outer edges of said digital image; detecting a set of edges within said two or more 1D projections; selecting edges from said set of edges; validating said selected edges to identify a set of validated edges; computing said ROI from said set of validated edges of said two or more 1D projections; and saving said computed ROI to memory.