Patent ID: 7555152

Claim:
A program storage device readable by a computer, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the computer to perform the method steps for detecting ground glass nodules in a digitized medical image, said method comprising the steps of: providing a digital chest image comprising a plurality of intensities corresponding to a domain of points in a n-dimensional space; calculating a probability distribution function of background lung tissue in said chest image based on a Markov random field model of said lung tissue; estimating a variation range of said background tissue probability distribution function; estimating a probability distribution function of an image point belonging to a ground glass nodule from said variation range of said background tissue probability distribution function by using a function corresponding to the variation range of the background tissue probability distribution function; and calculating a log likelihood function of said image from said background tissue probability distribution function and said estimated ground glass nodule probability distribution function, wherein said a log likelihood function represents the confidence that a point in said image is not part of a ground glass nodule.