Patent Document ID: 20110052049
Application ID: 12820885
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A method of computationally processing images of areas which may contain objects, the method comprising: acquiring a pixelated color image of an area as a set of pixilated color image data at least temporarily stored in at least one processor-readable medium; computationally preprocessing by at least one processor the set of pixelated color image data for at least a portion of the area to produce a set of two color contour image data that represents at least the portion of the pixilated color image, wherein a first color of the two color contour image data corresponds to contour pixels and a second color of the two color contour image corresponds to non-contour pixels; computationally processing by the at least one processor the set of two color contour image data to find a location of a bottom of a stack of objects in the set of two color contour image data and to find a location of a top of the stack of objects in the set of two color contour image data, if any objects are in the at least portion of the area, wherein the stack of objects includes at least one object if any objects are in the at least portion of the area; computationally determining by the at least one processor a total number of objects in the stack, if any based at least in part on a knowledge of the location of the bottom of the stack of objects and the location of the top of the stack of objects; computationally processing by the at least one processor a portion of the set of pixelated color image data based on the knowledge of the location of the bottom of the stack of objects and the location of the top of the stack of objects to respectively classify each object in the stack of objects into one of a defined set of color classes; and computationally determining by the at least one processor a cumulative total value of the stack of objects based at least in part on the color class to which each of the objects in the stack of objects is classified.