Systems and methods for determining whether a region of interest (ROI) includes a runway are provided. One system includes a camera for capturing an image of the ROI, an analysis module for generating a binary large object (BLOB) of at least a portion of the ROI, and a synthetic vision system including a template of the runway. The system further includes a segmentation module for determining if the ROI includes the runway based on a comparison of the template and the BLOB. One method includes the steps of identifying a position for each corner on the BLOB and forming a polygon on the BLOB based on the position of each corner. The method further includes the step of determining that the BLOB represents the runway based on a comparison of the polygon and a template of the runway. Also provided are computer-readable mediums storing instructions for performing the above method.