1. A computer-implemented method for comparing the similarity between two image patches taken from a stereo camera system, preferably in order to compute a depth estimation value for an object in the input field of a stereo camera, the method comprising the steps of: receiving from at least two vision sensors, such as e.g. a stereo camera, at least two image patches, wherein each sensor supplies an image patch, and comparing the received image patches by: extracting a number of corresponding subpart pairs from each image patch, calculating a normalized local similarity score between all corresponding subpart pairs, calculating a total matching score by integrating the local similarity scores of all corresponding subpart pairs, and using the total matching score as an indicator for an image patch similarity, determining corresponding similar image patches based on the total matching score.