Patent ID: 7471814

Claim:
A method for generating a curved-slab region of interest including a vessel, comprising the steps of: (a) identifying a vessel in the projection plane of an image; (b) projecting, for each pixel in said projecting plane, a line in the view plane of said image, said projected line in said view plane intersecting with said vessel; (c) identifying, along each of said lines in the view plane of said image, a first set of boundary points which approximate the intersection points of the vessel boundaries with surrounding tissue or bone along said line; (d) determining, for each of said first set of boundary pairs, a vessel-intensity value representing a combined-intensity value of the voxels within said boundary points and along said line, and determining a context-intensity representing a combined-intensity value for the voxels outside said boundary points and along said line; and (e) assigning said boundary pairs and corresponding vessel intensities to the respective pixels resulting in said curved slab region of interest of said vessel.