Patent Document ID: 9390502
Application ID: 13867560
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A computer apparatus to position a set of anatomical landmarks in a three-dimensional image data set of a part or all of a patient, comprising: processing circuitry configured to provide a trained supervised machine learning algorithm which has been trained to place each of the set of anatomical landmarks; apply the supervised machine learning algorithm to place the set of anatomical landmarks relative to the data set; provide a trained point distribution model, including a mean shape and a covariance matrix, wherein the mean shape represents locations of the set of landmarks in a variety of patients; and apply the point distribution model to the set of landmarks with the locations output from the supervised machine learning algorithm by: (i) removing any landmarks whose locations have an uncertainty above a threshold with reference to the mean shape and covariance matrix; followed by: (ii) an optimisation of the locations of the remaining landmarks by maximising joint likelihood that a new shape, derived from linear combinations of eigenvectors of the covariance matrix, is plausible.