1. A method for identifying one or more new pattern classes and incorporating the classes into a pattern recognition classifier as output classes, comprising: rejecting a plurality of input patterns determined not to be associated with any of a set of at least one represented output class by a pattern recognition classifier; grouping the rejected pattern samples into clusters according to the similarities between the pattern samples; identifying clusters that represent new pattern classes via independent review; and retraining the classifier to include the new pattern classes as output classes.