Patent Document ID: 9480439
Application ID: 14070457
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for analysis of computed tomography (CT) images for diagnosis of bone fractures, the method implemented in a decision support system having a processor and a memory, the method comprising: obtaining a CT image of a bone and performing a pre-processing on the obtained CT image to remove a first set of features to create a pre-processed CT image; automatically performing an edge detection on the pre-processed CT image to form an edge enhanced CT image and comparing the edge enhanced CT image to a set of bone image templates; automatically identifying from among the bone image templates a matching bone image template corresponding to the edge enhanced CT image, wherein the bone image template is a best matching template identified using an affine transformation dependent correlation between the set of bone image templates and the edge enhanced CT image, wherein the automatic identifying is performed using an iterative process over one or more consecutive cycles, wherein each cycle of the iterative process includes, performing a correlation determination between the edge enhanced CT image and the one or more bone templates, determining if an optimization for the correlation determination between the edge enhanced CT image and the one or more bone image templates satisfies an optimality condition for at least one of the one or more bone image templates, and if the optimality condition is not met, then (i) performing the affine transformation on the edge enhanced CT image and/or on the one or more of the bone image templates, (ii) performing an interpolation on the affine transformed edge enhanced CT image and/or on the affine transformed one or more bone image templates, and (iii) performing another correlation determination until the optimality condition is met and the matching bone image template is identified; automatically performing segmentation on the edge enhanced CT image using the matching bone template using an Active Shape Model (ASM) technique, wherein the edge enhanced CT image and the matching bone template are registered to one another forming a registered ASM technique; and detecting a fracture in the edge enhanced CT image in response to application of the registered ASM technique.