Patent Document ID: 20080095419
Application ID: 11662177
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A method for determining asymmetry in an image, the method comprising the steps of: determining a symmetry plane to divide the image into a first part and a second part, that comprise left and right hemispheres respectively; determining probability distributions of voxels against intensities for the first part and the second part; generating a first histogram of intensities representative of the first part; generating a second histogram of intensities representative of the second part; compensating for any relative shift along a predetermined axis between the first histogram and the second histogram; calculating a divergence value based on distance between the first and second histograms; and determining if the calculated divergence value is greater than a predetermined threshold, a divergence of greater than the predetermined threshold being indicative of asymmetry in the image and indicative of one or more abnormalities, wherein the step of calculating the divergence value comprises determining probability distributions of intensities for the first part and the second part and calculating the J-divergence value according to the following equation: 
 J ( p,q )= I ( p,q )+ I ( q,p ) where I(p/q) and I(q/p) are the Kullback-Leibler's divergences for intensity distributions q and p of the first and second parts respectively.