Patent ID: 8334878

Claim:
A medical image processing apparatus to be connected to at least one display unit that displays a medical image on a screen based on inputted image data, for correlating anatomically tomographic positions of axial images between plural series of images, said apparatus comprising: a storage unit configured to store a standard coordinate system in which coordinate values correlated to anatomically tomographic positions of an object to be inspected are set along a body axis of the object, said standard coordinate system being used as a reference when performing alignment between the plural series of images; a coordinate value providing unit configured to provide coordinate values in said standard coordinate system to the axial images included in a first series of images by correlating at least one characteristic position of the object represented in the first series of images to at least one first reference position in said standard coordinate system, and provide coordinate values in said standard coordinate system to the axial images included in a second series of images by correlating at least one characteristic position of the object represented in the second series of images to at least one second reference position in said standard coordinate system; and an alignment processing unit configured to correlate the axial images included in the first series of images to the axial images included in the second series of images based on the coordinate values provided to the axial images by said coordinate value providing unit such that anatomically tomographic positions of the axial images are substantially identical between the first series and the second series.