1. A method, in a data processing system, for detecting lithographic hotspots, the method comprising: receiving a design layout; generating spatial pattern clips from the design layout; performing a transform on the spatial pattern clips to form frequency domain pattern clips; performing feature extraction on the frequency domain pattern clips to form frequency domain features; utilizing the extracted features on a set of training samples to train a machine learning classifier model; and classifying a set of previously unseen patterns, based on frequency domain features of the previously unseen patterns using the trained machine learning classifier model, into hotspots and non-hotspots.