Patent ID: 9642586
Date: 2017-05-09
CPC Classifications: A61B,G06T

Claim:
1. A method for computer-aided analysis of medical images, where a pair of medical images is analysed, the pair including a first image, which is a contrasted scan of a part in a human or animal body, and a second image, which is a native scan of the same part of the human or animal body, the method comprising: a) identifying one or more anatomic structures within both the first image and the second image, resulting in a positional information of the one or more anatomic structures in the first and second images; b) identifying first centerlines of vessels in the first image, resulting in a positional information of the first centerlines in the first image; c) identifying second centerlines of vessels in the second image corresponding to respective first centerlines in the first image, resulting in a positional information of the second centerlines in the second image, where the identification of the second centerlines comprises mapping the first centerlines from the first image to the second image by estimating a spatial transform from the first image to the second image based on the identified one or more anatomic structures in the first and second images; d) extracting candidate calcified plaques in the second image; e) identifying calcified plaques out of the candidate calcified plaques by a machine learning classifier processing a number of features of the candidate calcified plaques; wherein d) and/or e) uses the positional information of the second centerlines in the second image.