1. A system for localizing a region of interest in a search image of at least a portion of a body comprising: a gradient template generated prior to a runtime based upon an expected image property of the region of interest; and a localization process/processor that, based upon the gradient template and during the runtime, identifies the region of interest and provides search image data that identifies portions of the region of interest; wherein the localization process/processor is based upon a cross-correlation of normalized gradient fields corresponding to the search image of the body and the gradient template.