Patent ID: 8150122

Claim:
A method for controlling a device to implement acquisition and/or evaluation of image data in a medical examination, comprising the steps of: supplying a previously acquired planning image data set, entirely or partially covering a target volume, to a processor; in said processor, accessing a statistical model based on anatomy of at least one subject and comprising at least one greyscale value distribution in a region of a surface of the target volume; in said processor, automatically determining spatial information of the target volume using said statistical model; establishing correspondence points on said surface of said target volume that correspond to points in said statistical model and determining, in said processor, grayscale values in the respective directions of surface normals for each of said correspondence points of said target volume, as profiles and normalizing said profiles and determining an average profile representing the statistical model and a covariance matrix representing statistical deviations for each correspondence point from said respective profiles; and from said processor, generating an output signal representing said spatial information and using said output signal to control said device for said acquisition and/or evaluation of image data.