Patent ID: 8442622

Claim:
A vertebra segmentation apparatus comprising: an image generator constructed and arranged to generate tomographic images at intervals along central axes of respective vertebrae; a first feature quantity calculator constructed and arranged to calculate a first feature quantity representative of a clearness of sectional shapes crossing the central axis at the vertebrae, for each of respective points on the central axis, based on the tomographic images generated by the image generator; a second feature quantity calculator constructed and arranged to calculate a second feature quantity representative of a clearness of sectional shapes parallel to the central axis at the vertebrae, for each of the respective points on the central axis, based on the tomographic images generated by the image generator; a third feature quantity calculator constructed and arranged to calculate a third feature quantity representative of a regularity of an array of the vertebrae, for each of the respective points on the central axis, based on the first feature quantity calculated by the first feature quantity calculator and the second feature quantity calculated by the second feature quantity calculator; and a vertebral position estimator constructed and arranged to estimate positions of the vertebrae on the central axis based on the third feature quantity, which is calculated by the third feature quantity calculator, for each of the respective points on the central axis.