Patent ID: 7995820

Claim:
A method for detecting fetal anatomic features in ultrasound images, said method comprising the steps of: providing a plurality of ultrasound images of a fetus, each said image comprising a plurality of intensities associated with a 2-dimensional grid; providing a parameter vector specifying a region of interest S containing an anatomic feature of interest for each of said plurality of images; training a sequence of probabilistic boosting tree classifiers, each with a pre-specified height and number of nodes, wherein each classifier is trained with a set of positive feature samples and a set of negative feature samples generated for each of said plurality of images by randomly sampling a parameter subspace, wherein each classifier computes a posterior probability P(y|S) where yε{−1,+1}, with P(y=+1|S) representing a probability that the image region S contains the feature of interest, and P(y=−1|S) representing a probability that image region S contains background information; and detecting said anatomic feature of interest in a new ultrasound image using said probabilistic boosting tree classifiers.