Patent ID: 7912266

Claim:
A method for segmenting tubular structures in medical images comprising the steps of: providing a 3-dimensional (3D) medical image volume, said image volume comprising a plurality of intensities associated with a 3D grid of points; providing at least 2 terminal points in said image, including a start point and an end point; minimizing an action surface U 0 (p) which, at each image point p, corresponds to a minimal energy integrated along a path that starts at start point p 0 and ends at p; sliding back on said minimal action surface from (p 1 , U 0 (p 1 )) to (p 0 , U 0 (p 0 )) wherein p 1 is an end point to find a minimal path connecting said terminal points; initializing a level set function with points on said minimal path; and evolving said level set function to find a surface of a structure about said minimal path, wherein said level set function is constrained to be close to a signed distance function and wherein said level set function is prevented from growing wider than a predetermined diameter R, wherein said surface about said minimal path defines a tubular structure.