Patent Document ID: 8144957
Application ID: 12325724
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. An anatomical feature boundary identification system for use in processing medical images including X-ray images having a substantial noise content, comprising: at least one repository for storing data representing a plurality of different candidate template boundary shapes for individual particular anatomical features of a plurality of different types of anatomical features; a computation processor coupled to said at least one repository, for, determining a converged boundary shape of a particular anatomical feature by iteratively substantially minimizing a first difference between, data representing a weighted combination of a plurality of different candidate template boundary shapes of a particular anatomical feature and data representing a boundary shape of said particular anatomical feature derived from image data of said particular anatomical feature and iteratively substantially maximizing a second difference between, data representing the weighted combination and data representing background non-anatomical features in an image; and an output processor coupled to said computation processor, for providing data representing said converged boundary shape of said particular anatomical feature for presentation in a display image of said particular anatomical feature.