Patent Document ID: 20080260221
Application ID: 12045327
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A method for lesion segmentation in 3-dimensional (3D) digital images comprising the steps of: providing a digitized 3D image, said image comprising a plurality of intensities associated with a 3D grid of voxels; selecting a 2D region of interest (ROI) from said 3D image, said ROI containing a suspected lesion, extending borders of said ROI to 3D forming a volume of interest (VOI), wherein voxels on said borders of said VOI are initialized as background voxels and voxels in an interior of said VOI are initialized as foreground voxels; propagating a foreground and background voxel competition wherein for each voxel in said VOI, having each neighbor voxel in a neighborhood of said voxel attack said voxel, and, if said attack is successful, updating a label and strength of said voxel with that of said successful attacking voxel; and evolving a surface between the foreground and background voxels in 3D until an energy functional associated with said surface converges in value, wherein said surface segments said suspected lesion from said image.