Patent ID: 7983732

Claim:
A method implemented by a computer programmed as a medical state determining apparatus for determining a medical state of an abnormality, comprising: obtaining image data including a plurality of three-dimensional medical images of the abnormality, each three-dimensional medical image corresponding to an image of the abnormality acquired at a different time relative to a time of administration of a contrast medium, each three-dimensional medical image having a predetermined number of slices and including a predetermined number of voxels; performing automatic segmentation of the abnormality by partitioning, by the medical state determining apparatus, the voxels into at least two groups using a first fuzzy c-means process based on the obtained image data, wherein each group corresponds to a subset of the predetermined number of voxels, and determining which of the at least two groups corresponds to the abnormality; partitioning all voxels corresponding to the determined abnormality into a plurality of classes corresponding to a plurality of temporal patterns using a second fuzzy c-means process; selecting, from among the plurality of temporal patterns, an enhancement temporal pattern as a temporal pattern representative of the abnormality; and determining, based on the selected temporal pattern, a medical state of the abnormality.