Patent ID: 8189894

Claim:
A method for treating anatomic images acquired in volume by a medical imaging system that partitions the anatomic images into sub-volumes corresponding to different parts of an anatomy identified on said acquired anatomic images, the method comprising: identifying the acquired anatomic images on which a lung appears, said identifying step including processing the acquired anatomical images to remove the air in a trachea from the images, said processing step including determining closely related components of air that appear on the acquired anatomical images; determining an average 3D eccentricity for the determined closely related components of air; comparing the average 3D eccentricities so calculated with a threshold to preserve only the closely related components whose 3D eccentricity is less than a first threshold, and whose length on a z axis is greater than a second threshold; and subtracting the closely related components thus isolated from the acquired anatomical images; determining lower and upper slices; delimiting the lower and upper slices according to an axis of the anatomy from which the anatomic images have been acquired, and applying a distinct processing to portions of the acquired anatomic images that correspond to anatomic zones respectively above the lower slice and below the upper slice.