Patent ID: 8644576

Claim:
A method of segmenting a left atrium (LA) in a 3D volume comprising: segmenting an LA chamber body mesh, an appendage mesh, and a plurality of pulmonary vein (PV) meshes in the 3D volume, wherein the LA chamber body mesh and the appendage mesh are segmented as a combined object and the plurality of PV meshes are segmented subject to a statistical shape constraint, and the segmenting of the plurality of PV meshes subject to the statistical shape constraint comprises: independently estimating pose parameters for each of the plurality of PV meshes in the 3D volume using marginal space learning (MSL), generating a point distribution model based on the pose parameters and center points of the segmented LA chamber body and appendage meshes, and adjusting the pose parameters for the plurality of PV meshes by enforcing a statistical shape constraint on the generated point distribution model; and generating a consolidated LA mesh from the LA chamber body mesh, the appendage mesh and the plurality of PV meshes.