Patent Document ID: 20140270442
Application ID: 14197567
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. An automated vascular territory segmentation method to identify arterial source location, comprising: providing at least one source image data set of a brain of a subject; electronically applying a three-dimensional connectivity clustering analysis to the brain image in image space on a voxel-wise basis to identify locations of small clusters of voxels having at least one image parameter that is substantially the same to identify a potential x, y source vessel location; electronically generating a first quantity of clustered territories based on the electronically applying step, each clustered territory having at least one associated source location in x, y coordinates; then electronically mapping source locations of the clustered territories in 2-D label space with source locations clustered based on spatial connectivity, wherein a respective clustered territory may have multiple neighboring source locations depending on detection resolution, vessel diameter, and vessel turns in a respective label plane; electronically generating a second quantity of clustered territories based on the mapped source locations, wherein the second quantity of clustered territories is less than the first quantity of clustered territories, and wherein multiple three-dimensional spatial clusters may be associated with a single source; then calculating a centroid distance to label space for each of the second quantity of clustered territories; then electronically determining if multiple territories are associated with a single source to evaluate vascular connectivity, wherein different clustered territories are identified as belonging to a single source if an associated calculated centroid distance is smaller than a detection resolution; then electronically generating at least one color-coded cerebral blood flow (CBF) territory map using source locations based on the vascular connectivity.