1. An architecture for real-time extraction of maximally stable extremal regions (MSERs) comprising a communication interface and processing circuitry configured in hardware to in real-time: receive a data stream of an intensity image via the communication interface; provide labels for image regions within the intensity image that match a given intensity threshold; find extremal regions within the intensity image based upon the labels; and determine MSER ellipses parameters based on the extremal regions and MSER criteria.