Patent Document ID: 20060115137
Application ID: 10999073
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A method for analyzing a three-dimensional (3D) image representative of an initial volume of interest (VOI) containing a lesion, the 3D image having an associated binary map comprising voxels associated with a thresholded variance map of the initial VOI, the initial VOI having boundaries that may be defined by a cube, the method comprising: determining a final VOI that is less than the initial VOI, the final VOI being a function of the number of transitions from a boundary voxel to a filtered voxel at an outer boundary of the lesion; analyzing the final VOI to determine a nodule consistency class; and classifying the VOI based upon the computed nodule consistency class by applying a voxel-clustering algorithm; and displaying the final VOI with respect to three classifications of tissue.