Patent ID: 7715607

Claim:
A computer-based method for locating one or more landmarks using an MR image of a brain, the method including the following automatic steps: (a) identifying a region of interest (ROI) with a plane of the MR image, the plane containing the landmark(s); (b) binarising the plane of the MR image into foreground and background voxels based on at least one threshold selected using anatomical knowledge, the threshold being selected by maximizing a function which is a sum of variances of voxel intensities below and above the threshold; (c) identifying a set of object voxels from the foreground voxels, the set of object voxels being formed by a sub-step of excluding from the foreground voxels a plurality of voxels which were only classified as foreground voxels due to proximity of cortical and non-cortical structures; (d) identifying and restoring object voxels lost during the excluding sub-step of step (c), the restored object voxels being: object voxels located far from the skull, and lost due to the morphological opening operation(s); object voxels located around the boundaries of the object, and lost due to the morphological opening operation(s); and object voxels lost due to the partial volume effect; and (e) identifying the one or more landmarks using the object voxels identified in the steps (c) and (d).