Patent ID: 7499578
Filing Date: 2009-03-03
Classification: G06T

Abstract:
1. A method for correlating a segmentation of 3-d images of a pulmonary nodule from a high-resolution computed tomography (CT) scans, the images being in a floating point pixel-format associated with a 6-dimensional parameter space and including a first image (im 1 ) obtained at time- 1 and a second image (im 2 ) obtained at time- 2 , the method comprising the steps of: (a) selecting a first region-of-interest (ROI (b) selecting a second region-of-interest (ROI (c) registering the second region-of-interest (ROI (d) separately segmenting both the nodule in the first region-of-interest (ROI (e) adjusting the first segmented nodule (S searching for the minimum mean-squared-difference (MSD) in the 6-dimensional parameter space, the transforming of the second region-of-interest (ROI 2 ) to obtain the transformed second region-of-interest (ROI 2t ) is a mapping of a point v in 3-d space to a point v′ in transformed space defined by: wherein R x , R y , and R z are rotation matrices defined as: