Patent ID: 8126229

Claim:
A system for automatically detecting pulmonary emboli from medical image data, comprising: receiving medical image data; automatically detecting one or more pulmonary embolism candidates from the received medical image data; segmenting an airway tract from the received medical image data; segmenting an artery structure from the received medial image data; calculating a distance between each of the one or more automatically detected pulmonary embolism candidates and a nearest portion of the segmented airway; determining whether each of the one or more automatically detected candidates is within or outside of the segmented artery structure; rejecting one or more of the pulmonary embolism candidates based on the calculated distance between each of the candidates and the nearest portion of the segmented airway and the determination as to whether each of the candidates is within or outside of the segmented artery structure; and indicating the location of the non-rejected pulmonary embolism candidates within the medical image data.