Patent ID: 6249693
Filing Date: 2001-06-19
Classification: G01R

Abstract:
A method for analyzing cardiac functionality of a heart comprising the steps of:a) acquiring a set of image data that includes respective intensity values for four-dimensional voxels within a region of interest;b) identifying a seed voxel from the four-dimensional voxels;c) identifying neighbor voxels to the seed voxel;d) determining, for each of the neighbor voxels, whether an intensity value corresponding to each neighbor voxel indicates that the voxel is likely to correspond to blood or to muscle tissue;e) for the set of the neighbor voxels having the intensity values that are likely to correspond to blood, determining new neighbors to the set of neighbor voxels;f) repeating steps d and e for the new neighbors until all voxels of interest have been evaluated, resulting in a final set of voxels, each of which has an intensity value that is likely to correspond to blood;g) identifying voxels neighboring the final set of voxels and which have intensity values not likely to correspond to blood, and adding said neighboring voxels to the final set of voxels; andh) reconstructing one or more cardiac images from the final set of voxels.