We present a new waveform detection method, based on the search of distinctive line-segments. The method is based on the basic assumption that the waveform morphology of biological signals is readily characterized by a sequence of the distinctive line-segments and their structural features. In this method, the distinctive line-segments are first searched for, and a structural feature analysis is performed an the distinctive line-segments found. Experiments of detecting epileptic spikes were carried out to evaluate the detection per formance of the method. Two subjects were used for training and tuning the algorithm and four subjects for testing the method. The results were obtained on two different performance indices, detection ratio and the number of false detections per minute.