The invention relates to method of detecting elliptical structures (10) in an image (9), comprising: detecting circular arc-shaped structures (11) in the image (9) using a circle Hough transform (CHT) of the image (9), wherein a radius and a center point (12) are determined for each circular arc-shaped structure (11), identifying pairs of circular arc-shaped structures (11) consisting of two of the detected circular arc-shaped structures (11) with substantially equal radii, defining, for each one of these pairs, a search area (14) within the image (9) depending on the center points (12) of the respective pair of circular arc-shaped structures (11), searching in the search area (14) defined for any given pair of circular arc-shaped structures (11), for a pair of edges (16) connecting these two circular arc-shaped structures (11). The invention further relates to a device for detecting elliptical structures in an image.