Patent ID: 6944330

Claim:
A computer-assisted diagnosis method for assisting diagnosis of anatomical structures in a digital volumetric medical image of at least one lung, comprising the steps of: identifying an anatomical structure of interest in the volumetric digital medical image; automatically segmenting, in real-time, the anatomical structure of interest in a predefined volume of interest (VOI); automatically computing, in real-time, quantitative measurements of the anatomical structure of interest, and executing a segmentation method that adaptively adjusts a segmentation threshold based on a local histogram analysis to determine an extent of the structural object of interest; displaying, in real-time, a result of said segmenting step and a result of said computing step; estimating, in real-time, a likelihood that the anatomical structure of interest corresponds to a disease or an area warranting further investigation, based on predefined criteria and the quantitative measurements; generating, in real-time, a warning, when the likelihood is above a predefined threshold; and generating a graphical user interface having a first window for displaying at least one view of the at least one lung, and a second window for displaying at least one of the result of said segmenting step and the result of said computing step.