Systems, computer program products, and techniques for detecting objects depicted in digital image data are disclosed, according to various exemplary embodiments. The inventive concepts uniquely utilize internal features to accomplish object detection, thereby avoiding reliance on detecting object edges and/or transitions between the object and other portions of the digital image data, e.g. background textures or other objects. The inventive concepts thus provide an improvement over conventional object detection since objects may be detected even when edges are obscured or not depicted in the digital image data. In one aspect, a computer-implemented method of detecting an object depicted in a digital image includes: detecting a plurality of identifying features of the object, wherein the plurality of identifying features are located internally with respect to the object; and projecting a location of one or more edges of the object based at least in part on the plurality of identifying features.