Patent ID: 7864997

Claim:
A method for machine-based segmentation of a cardiac chamber in four-dimensional magnetic resonance image data that contains short-axis cine sequences and long-axis cine sequences, the segmentation based on temporal variations in the image, the method performed by a data processing system with access to the image data, the method comprising: preprocessing the image data to eliminate high local image variances and inhomogeneity; processing the image data to localize the cardiac chamber within the image data by identifying positions of a base slice, an apex slice, an end-diastole phase, and an end-systole phase; machine-based segmentation of an endocard based on fuzzy object extraction; machine-based segmentation of an epicard through finding a radial minimum cost with dynamic sign definition and tissue classification; and determining a volume of the cardiac chamber based upon the segmentations of the endocard and epicard, the volume corrected on the basis of an apex position on a curve which is obtained from image data corresponding to long-axis cine sequences.