Patent ID: 8401265

Claim:
A method for processing medical image data for pixels of a medical image of an anatomical feature, comprising: applying an anti-aliasing filter to the medical image data so as to obtain filtered image data, wherein the anti-aliasing filter is comprised by a first filter kernel having weights that define an anti-aliasing filter; downsampling the filtered image data so as to obtain decimated image data, wherein pixel resolution of the decimated image data is one half of pixel resolution of the image data for the medical image; upsampling and applying an interpolation filter to the decimated image data so as to obtain interpolated image data, wherein the interpolation filter is comprised by a second filter kernel having weights that define an interpolation filter, wherein pixel resolution of the interpolated image data is equal to pixel resolution of the medical image data for the medical image, and wherein the size of the first kernel is smaller than the size of the second filter kernel; and obtaining difference image data between the interpolated image data and the medical image data for the medical image, at each of the respective pixels thereof, wherein the method further comprises pyramided and repeated application of the steps of applying an anti-aliasing filter, downsampling filtered image data, upsampling and applying an interpolation filter, and obtaining difference image data, and wherein the steps of applying an anti-aliasing filter, downsampling filtered image data, upsampling and applying an interpolation filter, and obtaining difference image data are repeated for a number of iterations which is based on a user selection of the number of iterations or a user selection of a final size of the decimated image.