Patent Document ID: 8116548
Application ID: 12471761

Base Claim:
1. A method for detecting a 3D anatomical object in a medical image volume, comprising: determining, by a processor, a constrained search range in the medical image volume based on a set of annotated training volumes; detecting position candidates in said constrained search range using a first trained classifier; generating position-orientation hypotheses from said position candidates based on orientation examples in said set of training volumes; detecting position-orientation candidates from said position-orientation hypotheses using a second classifier; generating similarity transformation hypotheses from said position-orientation candidates based on scale examples in said set of training volumes; detecting similarity transformation candidates from said similarity transformation hypotheses using a third trained classifier; and detecting said 3D anatomical object in the medical image volume based on at least one of said similarity transformation candidates.

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Claim 2:
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein said step of determining a constrained search range in the medical image volume comprises: for each of said training volumes, measuring six distances from an object center, each of said distances to a respective boundary of the training volume; calculating the minimum value for each of the six distances for all of said training volumes; and determining the constrained search range in the medical image volume as a range defined by the minimum distances from each boundary of the medical image volume.