Patent ID: 7418119

Claim:
A method for providing to a user a clinical recommendation for assessing the pathological nature of a lesion in living tissue, said method including the steps of: providing a digital image of the living tissue for display, the digital image devoid of a computer selected region of interest; prior to computer evaluation of the image, user-selecting on the displayed image a region of interest consisting of a portion of the tissue encompassing a single lesion; subsequent to said step of selecting, processing the digital image and computing an overall evaluation of the likelihood of disease for the lesion in the user-selected region of interest; based on the overall evaluation of the likelihood of disease and correlated therewith, generating a processor-computed explicit clinical recommendation for a further clinical course of action for assessing the lesion, the clinical recommendation usable for patient management; and presenting to the user, as separate items of information, both the overall evaluation of likelihood of disease and the explicit clinical recommendation for a further clinical course of action usable for patient management, wherein when said tissue is breast tissue said clinical recommendations are chosen from a group of recommendations including biopsy, short term follow-up, specific short term follow-up suggestion, examining the patient using other modalities, and comparing to one or more previous mammograms; when said tissue is lung tissue said clinical recommendations are chosen from a group of recommendations including biopsy surgical intervention, medical treatment, short term follow-up, and comparing to one or more previous examinations; when said tissue is intestinal tissue said clinical recommendations are chosen from a group of recommendations including biopsy, surgical excision, and colonoscopy; when said tissue is coronary artery tissue said clinical recommendations are chosen from a group of recommendations including use of a stent, performing balloon angioplasty, performing a bypass graft, and examining the patient using other modalities; and when said tissue is bone tissue said clinical recommendations are chosen from a group of recommendations including surgical intervention, medical treatment, short term follow-up, comparing to one or more previous examinations, radiation therapy and cement injection.