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:
Feb. 28, 2012
Filed:
Feb. 24, 2009
Engin Dikici, Jacksonville, FL (US);
Thomas P. O'donnell, New York, NY (US);
Randolph M. Setser, Shaker Heights, OH (US);
Richard D. White, Ponte Vedra Beach, FL (US);
Engin Dikici, Jacksonville, FL (US);
Thomas P. O'Donnell, New York, NY (US);
Randolph M. Setser, Shaker Heights, OH (US);
Richard D. White, Ponte Vedra Beach, FL (US);
Siemens Aktiengesellschaft, München, DE;
Abstract
A method for segmenting tubular structures in digital medical images includes extracting a subregion from a 3-dimensional (3D) digital medical image volume containing a vessel of interest, identifying potential vessel centerpoints for each voxel in the subregion by attaching to each voxel a tip of a 3D cone that is oriented in the direction of the voxel's image gradient and having each voxel within the cone vote for those voxels most likely to belong to a vessel centerline, selecting candidates for a second vote image that are both popular according to a first vote image, as well as being consistently voted upon by a radius image, reconfiguring the subregion as a graph where each voxel is represented by a node that is connected to 26 nearest neighbors by n-link edges, and applying a min-cut algorithm to segment the vessel within the subregion.