1. Method for extracting features of one or more objects against a background in a digitized image forming a multiple cell array having M rows and N columns, said objects having boundaries and being characterized by cells of a first binary state, and said background being characterized by cells of a second binary state, comprising the steps of: A. scanning said array along said rows in a single pass and detecting and identifying edges of objects in a succession of contiguous pairs of adjacent rows of said image, generating edge signals representative thereof, and B. processing said edge signals to identify segmentation features as a current line is scanned for each identified edge by identifying a portion of the boundary of the object associated with that identified edge as a primitive segment.