Abstract: One embodiment of this invention provides an image processing method for use in locating a landmark in an acquired image. The method comprises a method to sample several features from an image patch, and a decision tree, which performs a regression to the location of the landmark relative to the image patch. The image is scanned by extracting an image patch in many translated locations and for each patch applies the regression decision tree to produce one or more votes for the location of the given target point within the acquired image. The method further accumulates the regression votes for all of the patches in the scan to generate a response image corresponding to the given target point. The method finally performs an estimate of the local maxima of the voting map as the likely locations of the landmark.