The present invention provides for the automatic generation of a series of significant images. One or more representative significant images are used to generate a pattern description. The pattern description can include any information useful to identify an object of interest, or pattern. The pattern description can include a mathematical shape definition of one or more patterns, a search boundary defining an image area to search for matching patterns, and one or more pattern characteristics. The pattern description is compared to one or more images and one or more amounts of match between the pattern description and each image is obtained. The amount(s) of match are then compared to one or more thresholds. If one or more of the amounts of match exceed one or more thresholds or are within an upper and lower threshold window, then the image is automatically selected for inclusion in a series of significant images.