Patent ID: 7805001

Claim:
A computerized method for determining asymmetry in a medical image, the method comprising the steps of: receiving the medical image; determining a symmetry plane to divide the image into a first part and a second part, that comprise left and right hemispheres respectively; determining probability distributions of voxels against intensities for the first part and the second part; generating a first histogram of intensities representative of the first part and storing the first histogram on a computer memory; generating a second histogram of intensities representative of the second part and storing the second histogram on the computer memory; compensating for any relative shift along a predetermined axis between the first histogram and the second histogram; calculating, using a computer processor, a divergence value based on distance between the first and second histograms; and determining if the calculated divergence value is greater than a predetermined threshold, a divergence of greater than the predetermined threshold being indicative of asymmetry in the medical image and indicative of one or more abnormalities, wherein the step of calculating, using the computer processor, the divergence value comprises determining probability distributions of intensities for the first part and the second part and calculating the J-divergence value according to the following equation: J ( p,q )= I ( p,q )+ I ( q,p ) where I(p/q) and I(q/p) are the Kullback-Leibler's divergences for intensity distributions q and p of the first and second parts respectively.