Patent Document ID: 5457754
Application ID: 07725411
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for determining the boundary location of an object presented as a video image, the video image comprising a plurality of picture elements known as pixels, each pixel having a respective intensity level, the method comprising the steps of: (a) generating an original video image of the object; (b) creating a reduced size feature picture of the original video image of the object; (c) selecting a threshold value of pixel intensity; (d) setting the intensity level of all pixels of the feature picture which have a respective intensity level greater than said threshold value equal to a first predetermined intensity level; (e) setting the intensity level of all pixels of the feature picture which have a respective intensity level less than said threshold value equal to a second predetermined intensity level; (f) automatically identifying a plurality of adjacent pixels of the feature picture as corresponding to an internal region of the object; (g) automatically identifying a plurality of internal region boundary pixels as corresponding to the boundary of the internal region; (h) automatically identifying respective pixels of the original video image which correspond to the internal region boundary pixels identified in step (g); and (i) automatically identifying in the original video image respective object boundary pixels by selecting each respective object boundary pixel from a respective group of candidate pixels which contains a respective pixel identified in step (h).