Ellipses and elliptical features are evident in abundance, in a wide variety of digital images. Much of these features carry within itself useful statistical and geometrical information that can be exploited for a broad range of real-world applications. Algorithms developed of late for ellipse detection are application specific and are mainly based on traditional least-square fitting and Hough transform methods. This, in essence, is a step away from building a fully autonomous system with ellipse detection capabilities. This review attempts to redirect the research focus back towards a common goal of generating new ideas through the introduction of a modular framework.