1. A device for processing an image to recognize characteristic features of the image comprising: an image processor for identifying characteristic features of an image, said image processor adding values associated with rectangular coordinates of pixels representing a windowed partition of an image to provide plural counts, each count corresponding to a number of occurrences for each of plural polar coordinate values determined from said rectangular coordinates using a Hough transform in an array of overlapping polar coordinate values, said image processor further including: a plurality of comparators for comparing the plural counts of said polar coordinate values with one another in parallel; at least one logic device for logically combining outputs of said comparators to identify at least one local maxima count; and at least one additional comparator for comparing the at least one local maxima count with an adaptive threshold to identify at least one maximum meeting point of polar coordinate values, said at least one maximum meeting point representing a characteristic feature of said image.