Patent ID: 7155042

Claim:
A method of assessing one or more characteristic(s) of an organ or part thereof from multiple images acquired of the organ or part thereof, the method including forming a fit between a reference model of the geometric shape of the organ or part thereof and a series of acquired images of the organ or part thereof by a series of user interactive steps which consist essentially of: defining the spatial position of at least two of the acquired images; forming an initial fit between the reference model and the acquired images by displaying one or more of the acquired image(s) to a user, manually user defining one or more reference markers on the acquired image(s), and initially fitting the model to the acquired image(s) by reference to the reference markers on the image(s); displaying to a user an acquired image of the subject organ or part thereof, the image including at least one organ boundary derived from the intersection of a surface of the organ with the plane of the image; displaying to the user a representation of the initial fit of the reference model by displaying on the acquired image a representation of the intersection of the model with the plane of the image; manually user-defining one or more reference guide points on a user-selected organ boundary on the image displayed to the user, for which the spatial positions have been defined; on user definition of the or each reference guide point, converting the guide point(s) to coordinates which define the three dimensional position of the guide point(s); improving the fit of the model to the guide point(s) to form an improved fit of the model for the organ or part; displaying to the user a representation of the improved fit of the model by displaying on an acquired image a representation of the intersection of the improved fit of the model with the plane of the user-selected image; manually user-defining one or more further reference guide points on at least one further user-selected image displayed to the user, for which the spatial positions have been defined; and on user definition of the or each reference guide point, converting the further guide point(s) to coordinates which define the three dimensional position of the guide point(s); and further improving the fit of the model by fitting the model to said further reference guide point(s), to thereby form a further improved fit of the estimate model for the organ or part which enables assessing the one or more characteristic(s) from the estimate model.