Patent Document ID: 9858674
Application ID: 15034485
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A medical system for enhancing a structure of interest in an image of the structure within an anatomical body part, comprising: an analytical device for generating images of an anatomical body part; at least one computer operable to receive the images from the analytical device and having at least one processor and memory with instructions, the analytical device operable to acquire an enhanced image of the anatomical body part using a contrasting agent and acquire a non-enhanced image of the anatomical body part without using the contrasting agent, the instructions, when executed on the computer, configuring the computer to: spatially correlate the enhanced image and the non-enhanced image to create a common reference system; wherein both the enhanced image and the non-enhanced image include two dimensional layers of voxels positioned one above the other; transform at least one of the enhanced image and the non-enhanced image to create a bijective assignment between the voxels and the respective image so that a 1:1 correspondence between the voxels in the respective image is established; create a normalized difference image and acquiring a non-tumor region in both the enhanced image and the non-enhanced image; wherein each of the voxels of the enhanced image and the voxels of the non-enhanced image have voxel intensities and wherein the normalized difference image has a plurality of voxels each with an associated voxel intensity; acquire an intensity threshold of the normalized difference image to differentiate between the voxel intensities caused by the contrast agent and the voxel intensities not caused by the contrast agent; determine a tumor start region in the normalized difference image, the tumor start region representing a region of highest concentration of enhanced voxels in the normalized difference image; apply a region growing algorithm to the normalized difference image starting with the voxels in the tumor start region to create a final growing structure; apply a grayscale reconstruction to the normalized difference image to remove intensity variations and enhance a tumor structure by suppressing vascular structures in the normalized difference image to create an enhanced tumor image.