Patent ID: 8073216

Claim:
A method for automatic segmentation of a structure of interest from a target image volume T containing the structure of interest, wherein the structure of interest comprises the facial nerve and the chorda tympani of a living subject, and wherein the target image volume is characterized with a plurality of voxels, comprising the steps of: (a) providing a statistical model of the structure of interest, wherein the statistical model comprises a centerline of the structure of interest in an atlas A with each point along the centerline being associated with expected values for characteristic features, and wherein the characteristic features comprise a structure width E W , a centerline intensity E I , and a centerline curve orientation E O ; (b) affinely registering the target image volume T to the atlas A and a volume of the sub-image of the atlas A E that contains only a region of interest (ROI), so as to obtain a registered target image Tâ€² and an affine transformation Ï„ a ; (c) obtaining a transformation Ï„ n for a non-rigid registration between the registered target image Tâ€² and the volume of the sub-image of the atlas A E ; (d) associating each voxel v in the registered target image Tâ€² with the expected feature values of the characteristic features in the atlas A using the transformation Ï„ n ; (e) computing a cost matrix at each voxel v that measures the difference between the expected feature values and the feature values computed from the registered target image Tâ€² at the voxel v, and characterizes costs for all voxel connections in the registered target image Tâ€²; (f) localizing a starting point and an ending point for the structure of interest in the registered target image Tâ€²; (g) computing a centerline of the structure of interest in the registered target image Tâ€² with a minimum cost path algorithm using the cost matrix, the starting point and the ending point; (h) extracting a full structure of the structure of interest in the registered target image Tâ€² by deforming the computed centerline of the structure of interest with a level set algorithm; and (i) projecting the extracted full structure in the registered target image Tâ€² onto the target image volume T using the affine transformation Ï„ a , so as to obtain the segmentation of the structure of interest in the target image volume T.