1. A method for determining similarity between a plurality of signals, comprising: selecting a reference data set representing selected characteristics of a defined subject matter; collecting data to define a target data set, said target data set representing said selected characteristics measured for at least an overlap area of said defined subject matter common to said target data set and said reference data set; calculating for each one of a plurality of sub-regions within said overlap area, a set of normalized cross-correlation values using said reference data set and said target data set to evaluate a plurality of possible positions of the target data within the reference data; calculating for said plurality of sub-regions within said overlap area a set of phase correlation values using said reference data set and said target data set to evaluate a plurality of possible position of the target data within the reference data; calculating an element by element product of the normalized cross-correlation set and the phase correlation set to determine a phase-rho correlation set for each of said plurality of sub-regions within the overlap area; determining a correlation surface peak location for each sub-region defined by identifying a highest value in the phase-rho correlation set for each sub-region; and using point sets corresponding to the correlation surface peak locations from selected sub-regions in the overlap area to determine a transformation that minimizes the distance between the reference data set point locations and the corresponding point locations in the target data set to align the target data set with the reference data set; wherein at least one of said reference data and said target data is selected from the group consisting of image data, rf signal data, and audio data collected by a sensor.