Patent ID: 7526140

Claim:
A computer readable medium embodying a program of instructions executable by machine to perform steps for automatically detecting nodules from image data, the steps comprising: receiving an image having an object corresponding to an object type; iteratively segmenting the object; applying a moment transformation to the segmented object; measuring the object, wherein measuring the object comprises: detecting and interpolating edges of the object; and iteratively optimizing results of the measurement; offline modeling of the object type; and runtime matching of the object corresponding to the object type, wherein runtime matching comprises: receiving the image having the object corresponding to the object type; performing a coarse search for the object; and performing a refined search for the object, wherein performing a coarse search comprises localizing the object from the image in accordance with a model, and wherein performing a refined search comprises measuring the localized object, wherein localizing comprises: iteratively segmenting the object; and applying the moment transformation to the segmented object, and wherein iteratively segmenting the object comprises: selecting an initial estimate of a threshold by using the average gray-level of the 2n brightest pixels in the image, where n is the size of the model; segmenting the image into a background region and an object region in accordance with the threshold, with the pixels having a gray-level less than the threshold being assigned to the background region and all other pixels being assigned to the object region; calculating the mean gray-levels within the background and object regions, respectively; calculating a new threshold in accordance with the calculated mean gray-levels and the number of pixels in each region; repeating the above steps of segmenting, calculating gray-levels and calculating new thresholds until convergence is reached; and obtaining the segmented object from the final pixels in the object region.