Patent ID: 6674879
Filing Date: 2004-01-06
Classification: A61B,G01S

Abstract:
An image processing system, comprising:an image source which digitizes and outputs a video image of a patient's anatomy; an image processor which implements at least one software process for processing a video image from said image source, said at least one software process removing noise from said video image while enhancing the definition of an internal structure of the patient's anatomy, automatically identifying a border of said internal structure and tracking movement of said border, and quantitating the extent of motion of at least said border of said internal structure of the patient's anatomy during a selected time frame; and a display which displays a processed video image representative of the extent of motion of at least said border of said internal structure of the patient's anatomy during said selected time frame, wherein said at least one software process removes noise from said video image while enhancing the definition of an internal structure of the patient's anatomy by performing a non-linear gray scale transformation on a received video image, recursively averaging the transformed video image, and performing a non-linear gray scale morphology operation on said transformed and averaged video image.