Patent ID: 7058240

Claim:
A method of assigning a pattern to one of a plurality of classes, said method comprising the steps of: creating a database comprising data from a group of first objects, the data corresponding to each one object from said group of first objects comprising: an identifier for each pattern included in said one object, said pattern being one of a plurality of first patterns, location data for each said pattern, dimension data for said one object, and validated previous assignments of each said pattern to one of the plurality of classes; normalizing each location datum corresponding to one of said plurality of first patterns, normalized with respect to dimensions of a corresponding one of said group of first objects to provide normalized location data of the group of first objects; creating a normalized geometric grid normalized to object dimensions, said normalized geometric grid comprising a plurality of points; deriving data for predetermined characteristic coordinates for each pattern in said plurality of first patterns from the normalized location data; forming a plurality of probability distributions, based on the assignment of each one of said plurality of first patterns to one of said plurality of classes; assigning a frequency of occurrence of each one of the predetermined characteristic coordinates in one of said plurality of classes to each one of said plurality of points in said normalized geometric grid, said assignment based on one of said plurality of probability distributions; deriving the predetermined characteristic coordinate data values for a second pattern, and, dimensions for a second object from measurements on the second object; normalizing, with respect to second object dimensions, each predetermined characteristic coordinate data value for the second pattern; obtaining a location in said normalized geometric grid of each normalized characteristic coordinate datum value from the second pattern; obtaining a frequency of occurrence value for each one of the predetermined characteristic coordinates in each of said plurality of classes at the location of said characteristic coordinate data from the second pattern, said frequency of occurrence value obtained from one of said plurality of probability distributions; assigning the second pattern to one of said plurality of classes based on predetermined criteria.