1. A method for automatically locating a boundary of an object of interest in a field of view, the method comprising: forming an electronic image of the field of view containing the object, wherein the electronic image is formed of a plurality of image pixels; identifying groups of the image pixels that represent edge segments of the object; forming patches around the image pixel groups, wherein each patch is dimensioned and positioned to entirely contain one of the image pixel groups; and performing a patch merge process that merges any two of the patches together that meet a predetermined proximity threshold relative to each other to form a merged patch that is dimensioned and positioned to entirely contain the two merged patches, wherein the merge process continues for any of the patches and the merged patches meeting the predetermined proximity threshold until none of the patches and the merged patches meet the predetermined proximity threshold.