A computer-implemented method for query-based extraction of anatomical structures in a plurality of three dimensional medical images, comprising the steps of: - Providing a plurality of medical volumes with indexed sub-volumes which have configurable form and dimension, which have been preprocessed and indexed according to an automatic preprocessing method for generating sub-volumes of a plurality of three dimensional medical volumes for the purpose of semantic extraction of anatomical structures, - Providing or acquiring and reconstructing a medical three-dimensional image as volume, which may contain different anatomical structures or a part of an anatomical structure, - Automatically detecting landmarks in the volume, - Matching the detected landmarks with at least one atlas image to generate an indexed volume, - Splitting the indexed volume into indexed sub-volumes according to atlas image data, - Storing the indexed sub-volumes in a database, - Inputting and parsing a textual medical query, referring to an anatomical structure, - Mapping the parsed query to at least one ontological data entry in an ontology database by means of a meta image index, - Computing a set of sub-volumes which have an index which matches the query, wherein the set of sub-volumes consists of at least a part of the anatomical structure which the query refers to and wherein all sub-volumes are indexed separately, so that it is possible to access a sub-volume in the database directly without the necessity to download the volume as a whole, - Merging the set of computed sub-volumes to generate a query-specific volume, which is an artificial or virtual volume, based on a plurality of different patient images, wherein the query-specific volume is generated as a kind of collage, wherein all the different results of the query-based sub-volumes are displayed as a two-dimensional representation and merged to generate one common image with a plurality of sub-images, so that a first sub-image may be displayed adjacent to a second one, and - Downloading the query-specific volume to be displayed on a graphical search interface. - Providing a plurality of medical volumes with indexed sub-volumes which have configurable form and dimension, which have been preprocessed and indexed according to an automatic preprocessing method for generating sub-volumes of a plurality of three dimensional medical volumes for the purpose of semantic extraction of anatomical structures, - Providing or acquiring and reconstructing a medical three-dimensional image as volume, which may contain different anatomical structures or a part of an anatomical structure, - Providing or acquiring and reconstructing a medical three-dimensional image as volume, which may contain different anatomical structures or a part of an anatomical structure, - Automatically detecting landmarks in the volume, - Matching the detected landmarks with at least one atlas image to generate an indexed volume, - Splitting the indexed volume into indexed sub-volumes according to atlas image data, - Storing the indexed sub-volumes in a database, - Inputting and parsing a textual medical query, referring to an anatomical structure, - Inputting and parsing a textual medical query, referring to an anatomical structure, - Mapping the parsed query to at least one ontological data entry in an ontology database by means of a meta image index, - Computing a set of sub-volumes which have an index which matches the query, wherein the set of sub-volumes consists of at least a part of the anatomical structure which the query refers to and wherein all sub-volumes are indexed separately, so that it is possible to access a sub-volume in the database directly without the necessity to download the volume as a whole, - Computing a set of sub-volumes which have an index which matches the query, wherein the set of sub-volumes consists of at least a part of the anatomical structure which the query refers to and wherein all sub-volumes are indexed separately, so that it is possible to access a sub-volume in the database directly without the necessity to download the volume as a whole, - Merging the set of computed sub-volumes to generate a query-specific volume, which is an artificial or virtual volume, based on a plurality of different patient images, wherein the query-specific volume is generated as a kind of collage, wherein all the different results of the query-based sub-volumes are displayed as a two-dimensional representation and merged to generate one common image with a plurality of sub-images, so that a first sub-image may be displayed adjacent to a second one, and - Downloading the query-specific volume to be displayed on a graphical search interface.