Patent ID: 8073227

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of extracting a centerline of a tubular structure in a digital medical image, the method performed by the computer comprising the steps of: providing a 3-dimensional (3D) digitized medical image, said image comprising a plurality of intensities on a 3D lattice of points and having a segmented tubular structure; providing a starting point in said tubular structure; finding a path in said image between the starting point and every other point in the tubular structure that minimizes an accumulative cost function, wherein said minimum accumulative cost Ï†(x) at a point x is a minimum of (Ï†(xâ€²)+P x,xâ€² ) over all nearest neighbors xâ€² wherein P x,xâ€² is a cost of propagation from point x to xâ€², which is obtained from the inverse of a medialness measure computed in a plane orthogonal to a line between x and xâ€² that is centered at a mid-point of said line between x and xâ€², said medialness measure m(x) computed in a circular region C(x, R) centered at point x on said line, with radius R, given by m â¡ ( x ) = max R â¢ { 1 N â¢ âˆ‘ i = 0 N - 1 â¢ f â¡ ( x , R â¢ â¢ u â†’ â¡ ( 2 â¢ Ï€ â¢ â¢ i / N ) ) } , wherein {right arrow over (u)}(Î±)=sin(Î±){right arrow over (u)} 1 +cos(Î±){right arrow over (u)} 2 and {right arrow over (u)} 1 and {right arrow over (u)} 2 define a 2D plane, and Æ’(x 0 ,R{right arrow over (u)}(Î±)) is a fit measure along vector {right arrow over (u)}(Î±) starting from x 0 , f â¡ ( x o , R ) = max ( 1 R â¢ âˆ‘ x = x 0 x 0 + R â¢ I â¡ ( x ) - 1 M â¢ âˆ‘ x = x 0 + R + 1 x 0 + R + 1 + M â¢ I â¡ ( x ) 2 , 0 ) , wherein M is the number of background points.