A method of identifying an object in a digital image includes finding a point in a digital image that is a concentration location, initializing a cluster with said concentration location, adding the neighboring points of the concentration location to a list, selecting a neighbor point with an extremal potential value from said list, determining a slide direction of all neighbors of said selected point and identifying those neighbors that slide to the selected point, adding those neighbor points not already in the list to the list, adding the selected point to the cluster, and repeating the steps of selecting a neighbor point with an extremal potential value, determining a slide direction, adding points to the list, and adding the selected point to the cluster, until the list is empty.