Patent ID: 6980682

Claim:
A method for segmenting an image acquired with a medical imaging system to identify the boundary of an organ, comprising: A. acquiring image data of said organ with said medical imaging system; B. reconstructing an image corresponding generally to said organ; C. selecting a starting location on said reconstructed image within the confines of said boundary of said organ; D. iteratively propagating an expansion boundary around said starting location outwardly a plurality of times until it is determined that said expansion boundary has traversed said boundary of said organ; E. refining said reconstructed image, including: i. activating pixels on said reconstructed image having an intensity value greater than an intensity of said expansion boundary during a previous iteration; ii. removing pixels not connected to said starting location; iii. mapping said reconstructed image onto an output image; and iv. activating pixel clusters within said expansion boundary that are smaller than a predetermined threshold; and F. outputting a representation of said boundary of said organ.