Patent ID: 7715609

Claim:
A method for automatically determining position and orientation of at least a left ventricle in 3D image data records of a heart, the method comprising: preparing, with the aid of a computed tomography unit, a 3D image data record of the heart; coarsely segmenting at least the left ventricle with the aid of an image processing algorithm in the 3D image data record, and determining a long main axis of the left ventricle from the segmented image data; detecting end points of a boundary line of the septum, starting from the long main axis with radial search beams, starting from the long main axis; and determining the position and orientation of the left ventricle on the basis of the segmented image data, the long main axis and the end point; wherein the coarse segmentation of the left ventricle is refined by adapting a model; a starting position and initial scaling are determined as starting parameters for the adaptation of the model by a preprocessing in which a transition from the aorta into the left ventricle is detected on the basis of a region growing algorithm, starting from an arbitrary, prescribable starting point in the aorta, and the left ventricle is delimited from the right ventricle; and the coarsely segmenting, the detecting and the determining are performed by a processor.