Patent ID: 8200010

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for segmenting images from a plurality of images, the method comprising: analyzing the plurality of images to derive a fingerprint of each image, wherein each image has associated with it a plurality of patches containing points of interest associated with distinctive features in the image, and the fingerprint of the image comprises an aggregation of sub-fingerprints, each sub-fingerprint derived from one of the patches of the image; determining a set of at least two similar images in the plurality of images by identifying patches associated with a first image that match patches associated with a second image; determining a group of at least two similar images having at least one common object by performing geometric matching between the matching patches between pairs of similar images in the set, the geometric match of matching patches between a first image of a pair and a second image of the pair identifying at least one common object between the first image and the second image; and segmenting each image in the group of similar images having at least one common object, wherein segmenting comprises: tabulating scores for a plurality of sub-regions within each image in the group of similar images based upon the number of points of interest within a sub-region matching points of interest in other images in the group of similar images; determining two or more sub-regions within each image for merging based in part to their scores; and merging the determined sub-regions within each image to form the common object therein.