Patent ID: 7016539

Claim:
A method for determining the presence or absence of at least one instance of a predetermined pattern in a run-time image, and for determining the multidimensional location (pose) of each present instance, the method comprising: providing a model that represents the pattern to be found, the model including a plurality of probes, each probe representing a relative position at which at least one test is performed in an image at a given pose, each such test contributing evidence that the pattern exists at the pose; providing the run-time image; comparing the model with the run-time image at each of a plurality of poses; computing a match score at each pose to provide a match score surface; locating local maxima in the match score surface; comparing the magnitude of each local maxima with an accept threshold; and returning the location of each local maxima with magnitude that exceeds the accept threshold so as to provide the location any instances of the pattern in the image.