Techniques are disclosed for carrying our correlation search in contexts such as stereo algorithms of graphics systems. In accordance with an embodiment, the techniques employ a locality-sensitive hashing (LSH) function to reduce the number of bits to be processed during the correlation process, and to identify a sub-set of available image points that are likely to be the best match to a given target image point. Once such a sub-set of likely image points is identified, a more comprehensive correlation algorithm can be run, if so desired, to further ensure the quality of the match.