The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 09, 1997
Filed:
Sep. 17, 1996
Roger Stephen Gaborski, Pittsford, NY (US);
Thaddeus Francis Pawlicki, Rochester, NY (US);
Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, NY (US);
Abstract
A method of automatically segmenting the bone regions in a digital radiograph of a body extremity comprising the steps of: providing a digital radiographic image of a body extremity having one or more digits; estimating the upper and lower threshold values of the provided image; binarizing the provided image by a binarization system which uses the estimated upper and lower threshold values to produce a bi-tonal image; removing noise from the binarized image by a noise removal system; processing the noise removed binary image by a skeletonization technique in order to form an initial estimate of the central axis of each body extremity digit; approximating the locus of points generated by the processing step by a linear fit system; joining lines with near end points with a line linking system which results in a piece wise linear approximation of the central axis for each body extremity digit; for each point along the axes, generating perpendicular projections which extend a fixed pixel distance; for each perpendicular projection, averaging the pixel values by a trace generation system; convolving each density trace with a matched filter; analyzing the output of the matched filter step by a joint detection system to locate digit joints; for each body extremity digit, determining the bone edges between two joints; and determining the average density of the digit region between the digit joints and bone edges.