Patent Document ID: 8331642
Application ID: 12980385
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for determining a contour of an object in a digital image, comprising: determining a preliminary object center; determining contour candidate image points as image points on a plurality of paths leading away from the preliminary object center, by detecting a change from a first section to a second section of a feature space based on an image point value range of the digital image or by detecting the exceeding of a predetermined strength of a feature change in the feature space, wherein the detection is executed along the paths leading away and the contour candidate image points comprise distances to the preliminary object center and are ordered according to a polar angle; evaluating the distances to acquire a quality level for the preliminary object center; determining a further object center and further distances of the contour candidate image points to the further object center; evaluating the further distances to acquire a further quality level, wherein the quality level and the further quality level indicate probabilities that the respective preliminary or further object center is located at the center in the contour; selecting an improved object center point from the preliminary or the further object center using the quality level and the further quality level; determining zones of neighboring contour candidate image points within which a change of the distances or the further distances of the contour candidate image points is above a threshold value; eliminating contour candidate image points lying between the zones of neighboring contour candidate image points and comprising greater distances than the remaining contour candidate image points; and determining the contour on the basis of the remaining contour candidate image points, wherein the quality level and the further quality level indicate probabilities that the corresponding preliminary or further object center are at the center of the contour.