Patent ID: 7190832

Claim:
A method for detecting an object in a pixelated image and segmenting the pixelated image to separate the object from a background, comprising the steps of: (a) providing pixelated image data for a plurality of pixelated images, where a pixelated image in the plurality of pixelated images may include an object; (b) detecting the presence of an object included within any of the pixelated images by filtering the pixelated image data, producing filtered image data in which an object is detected in a pixelated image based upon relative amplitude values of pixels corresponding to the filtered image data for said pixelated image; (c) segmenting the image in which the object was detected by defining a region of interest from the filtered image data for the pixelated image in which the object was detected, so that the region of interest comprises less than all of the filtered image data for said pixelated image, but includes the object that was detected in said pixelated image; and (d) determining object boundaries for the object using the filtered image data within the region of interest, wherein the step of determining object boundaries comprises the steps of: (i) applying a first binomial blur operation to the filtered image data within the regions of interest, thereby approximating convolving the filtered image data in the region of interest with a Gaussian filter, producing a Gaussian blurred image data; (ii) executing a bitwise shift operation on the filtered image data to produce shifted image data; (iii) determining a difference between the Gaussian blurred image data and the shifted image data to produce difference image data; and (iv) applying a second binomial blur operation to the difference image data, thereby approximating a Laplacian of the Gaussian (LOG) blurred version of the filtered image data for the region of interest and producing LOG image data.