Patent ID: 9478009
Filing Date: 2016-10-25
CPC Classification: A61B,G01R,G01S,G06T

Claim Text:
1. A method of acquiring medical image data of a patient's region of interest, the method comprising: acquiring, by a medical imaging scanner, a first two-dimensional (2D) image series of a patient's region of interest, the first 2D image series comprising a plurality of 2D image slices, the image slices of the first 2D image series starting from an initial position in a coordinate system and having a predetermined skip therebetween, each image slice of the first 2D image series having a predetermined slice thickness; and repeating the acquiring step to separately acquire one or more additional 2D image series of the patient's region of interest until a desired degree of overlap between the separately acquired first and additional 2D image series is achieved, wherein each separate additional 2D image series is acquired using the same image slice thickness and the same skip between image slices as the first 2D images series but with an adjusted initial position in the coordinate system such that a plurality of the separately acquired 2D image series start from initial positions in the coordinate system that are less than the predetermined slice thickness from each other to thereby define overlaps between the separately acquired first and additional 2D image series.