1. A method of eliminating processing window artifacts that occur in segmentation of data having spatial characteristics through a recursive approximation of a segmentation algorithm, the method including: (a) recursively divide the data into subsections, each subsection having a boundary and no more than a predetermined number of data elements, designating as contagious each new region that is adjacent to a data subsection boundary; (b) calculate a dissimilarity criterion between each new region and each other spatially adjacent region; (c) if the dissimilarity criterion between one new region and another spatially adjacent region is less than or equal to a maximum merging threshold and if the one new region is not contagious, merge the one new region with the most similar spatially adjacent region; and (d) repeat step (c) until a predetermined number of merged regions is attained or until no further merges can occur.