1. A method of determining possible locations of standard cells in an image of an IC layout comprising: extracting points of interest from the image; creating a descriptor in the vicinity of each of the points of interest; extracting a first instance of a standard cell from the image; comparing descriptors from the first instance of a standard cell to the other the descriptors of the image to identify similar points of interest; casting votes on the similar points of interest to show the level of confidence on the similarity of the similar points of interest; and computing the weight of the votes and determining possible matches by locations on the image showing high weights.