Patent Document ID: 6031935
Application ID: 09022870
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method of segmenting a set of images comprising the steps of: a) providing a set of search images, each search image containing a view of a target object; b) providing a priori domain knowledge corresponding to the set of search images; c) selecting a training image from the set of search images; d) obtaining at least one training contour from the selected training image, the training contour representing an outline of the target object in the selected training image; e) utilizing the selected training contour to extract training information corresponding to the target object in the selected training image; f) associating the training contour with a selected search image of the set of images, the training contour defining a search contour; g) deforming the search contour relative to the selected search image and maintaining predetermined information corresponding to the deformed search contour; h) utilizing the training information and the a priori domain knowledge to identify regions of the deformed search contour that correspond within predetermined limits to an outline of the target object in the selected search image; and i) repeating steps (c) through (h) for each image in the set of search images so as to segment all of the images in the set of search images.