1. A method of reading images, comprising the steps of: decimating an image; normalizing the decimated image histogram; rebinning grayscale pixel data associated with the decimated image; reassigning a selected range of gray scales representing a region of interest of the remapped grayscale pixel data to one while zeroing others; labeling the connected pixels associated with the range of gray scales representing the region of interest; joining and extending the connected pixels through region growing using a pre-selected offset value; and filtering segmented regions of the connected pixels to eliminate certain candidates.