Patent ID: 9218661
Filing Date: 2015-12-22
Classification: A61B,G06T,G16H

Abstract:
1. A method for automatically determining an input for segmentation of one or more lung lesions in a plurality of sets of image data from a subject, comprising: providing an input set of image data that has been segmented with the lesion and a target set of image data, wherein registration cannot align the lesion in the target set of image data because the lesion has changed shape such that the registration cannot be applied to the lesion with the changed shape with a combination of only rotations, translations, scaling and shearing and in which a registration modeled by a registration matrix of the input set of image data to the target set of image data cannot align the input lesion to the target lesion, the target set of image data being obtained at a different and separated point in time from the input set of image data, the different and separated point in time being separated by at least one day; determining a threshold that selects only low-intensity data points; dilating initial segmentation of the input image data within the threshold to create a larger image region about the initial segmentation of the lesion in the input image data; transforming the mask from the initial set of image data to the target set of image data according to a registration between the input and the target sets of image data to form a transformed mask; determining a threshold mask that selects high intensity voxels; combining the threshold mask and the transformed mask to form the combined mask; and selecting a point within the combined mask that lies furthest from the mask boundaries to form the input for segmentation.