A method is provided for finding a whole pattern in an image, where at least a
portion of the whole pattern falls outside the boundary of the image. The method
includes, for each candidate pose of a search model of the whole pattern that results
in a transformed search model that may extend beyond the boundary of the image,
applying a match-quality metric to only a subset of search model features and corresponding
image features, the subset being uniquely determined by the pose. The features
which do not overlap the image at that pose of the model are completely excluded
from the metric computation. All the relevant available information is used, using
no arbitrarily hypothesized information. The higher-level strategy of the search
procedure is free to consider poses where the model extends partially outside the
image, and the results of each metric computation will be the most true value possible.