1. A system for finding line features in an acquired image comprising: a vision system processor receiving image data of a scene containing line features, having an edge point extractor that (a) computes a gradient vector field from the image data, (b) projects the gradient vector field over a plurality of gradient projection sub-regions, and (c) finds a plurality of edge points in respective of the gradient projection sub-regions based on the projected gradient data; and a line-finder that generates a plurality of lines that are consistent with the edge points extracted from the image.