Patent ID: 7885443

Claim:
A method for facilitating temporal comparison of breast mammograms by a viewer, comprising: receiving a prior mammographic image originating from a first mammogram acquisition system and having a first tissue distance per pixel, and further receiving a prior mammogram image set comprising a plurality of mammogram views of the breast, said prior mammographic image being one of said plurality of mammogram views; receiving a subsequent mammographic image of the breast originating from a second mammogram acquisition system different than the first mammogram acquisition system and having a second tissue distance per pixel different than the first tissue distance per pixel, and further receiving a subsequent mammogram image set comprising a corresponding plurality of mammogram views of the breast, said subsequent mammographic image being one of said corresponding plurality of mammogram views; and without requiring a scale-adjusting viewer input, displaying for simultaneous viewing all of said mammogram views of both of said prior and subsequent mammogram image sets including said prior and subsequent mammographic images on a same mammogram display at an identical tissue distance per unit display distance, said simultaneously displayed mammogram views appearing in a respective plurality of display windows sized according to a hanging protocol, the method further comprising segmenting each of said mammogram views of said subsequent mammogram image set to identify a background section and a breast tissue section thereof, wherein said identical tissue distance per unit display distance is a value for which both (i) a relatively large percentage of at least one of the display windows associated with said subsequent mammogram image set is occupied by the breast tissue section of the corresponding mammogram view, and (ii) the breast tissue sections of each of the simultaneously displayed mammogram views for said subsequent mammogram image set are wholly contained in their respective display windows.