Patent ID: 7346209

Claim:
A method for detecting and classifying a shape in a medical image, comprising the steps of: (a) having a shape signature classifier, said shape signature classifier comprises a plurality of shape signatures of different shapes; (b) determining a shape signature, wherein said determining comprises: (i) having a 3-D volume of a medical image said 3-D volume comprises at least part of a structure; (ii) selecting a shape within said at least part of said structure of said 3-D volume; (iii) generating a plurality of triples of mutually orthogonal planes within said 3-D volume, wherein said triples differ from each other in position, orientation or position and orientation; (iv) for each set of said plurality of triples determining a plurality of attributes; (v) for each set of said plurality of triples combining said determined plurality of attributes into a feature vector; and (vi) combining said feature vectors into a shape signature defining said selected shape within said 3-D volume, wherein said shape signature is obtained via a vector quantization method; and (c) classifying said selected shape by analyzing said shape signature of said combined feature vectors in view of said plurality of shape signatures in said shape signature classifier.