Patent ID: 7085407

Claim:
A method for detecting, from a digital chest image, a ribcage boundary for computer-aided diagnosis with which landmark information serving as a landmark in displaying a chest configuration depicted on the digital chest image is detected and a ribcage boundary is detected from the landmark information, said method comprising: deciding a size of a searching ROI mapped on the digital chest image; setting the searching ROI on the digital chest image; enhancing an image within the searching ROI set on the digital chest image; obtaining a profile of pixel values existing within the searching ROI; weighting the profile of pixel values existing within the searching ROI; analyzing the obtained profile so as to decide a candidate point for the ribcage boundary; and repeating said deciding, said setting, said enhancing, said obtaining, said weighting and said analyzing until a center of each of a plurality of searching ROIs, which are different in position for each repetition, advances immediately before a given search limit so as to provide a series of candidate points for the ribcage boundary; and wherein the profile consists of a horizontal pixel-value averaged vertical profile and a vertical pixel-value averaged horizontal profile, and a weight of the weighting becomes increasingly smaller as the weighting advances from a center of each of the vertical and horizontal profiles toward an inside of lung fields.