Patent ID: 8320652

Claim:
A method of segmenting an endocardium boundary in a dataset comprising a plurality of multi-dimensional images acquired for respective temporal phases in a temporal sequence, each multi-dimensional image comprising data on a target tissue and on a further tissue, said method comprising the steps of: accessing results of a binary segmentation of the temporally sequenced images yielding temporally sequenced binary coded images whereby image portions corresponding to blood are labeled with a first preselected fixed value and all other image portions are labeled with a second predetermined fixed value different from the first preselected fixed value; for all temporal phases from the temporal sequence computing successive difference between pairs of successive binary coded images yielding a multi-dimensional temporal feature map comprising a plurality of discrete positive, negative, and zero values such that the spatial positions have a value which is either positive or negative during systole and have a value which is the other of either positive or negative during diastole; deriving spatial positions of segmentation edge segments in the dataset corresponding to a pre-determined discrete value selectable from said plurality of discrete positive, negative, and zero values; accessing a pre-defined deformable topographical model of the endocardium boundary; segmenting the structure by deforming said deformable topographical model to fit said spatial positions of the edge segments.