Patent ID: 8411919

Claim:
A method for segmenting image data within a data processing system, comprising: acquiring static image of a physical structure; establishing one or more seed points within the image; modeling the physical structure of the static image as a fluid model; calculating a flow field for the fluid model by using image features of the physical structure of the image as influences of flow within the fluid model; using the established one or more seed points as sources and sinks of at least one diffusive dye that diffuses and advects through the calculated flow field; determining a dye concentration at each of a plurality of portions of the fluid model that results from the diffusion and advection of the dye within the calculated flow field; and segmenting the physical structure of the image into one or more regions based on the determined dye concentration for the corresponding dye within the fluid model, wherein segmenting the physical structure of the image based on the dye concentrations within the fluid model includes: examining the fluid model as a set of pixels/voxels; determining the concentration for each dye at each pixel/voxel; segmenting the fluid model into continuous regions of pixels/voxels in accordance with a dominant concentration of a particular dye; and carrying over the segmentation of the fluid model back into the physical structure of the image.