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:
Sep. 15, 2015
Filed:
Mar. 15, 2011
Christopher Douglas Hermann, Atlanta, GA (US);
Barbara Dale Boyan, Atlanta, GA (US);
Zvi Schwartz, Atlanta, GA (US);
Christopher Douglas Hermann, Atlanta, GA (US);
Barbara Dale Boyan, Atlanta, GA (US);
Zvi Schwartz, Atlanta, GA (US);
GEORGIA TECH RESEARCH CORPORATION, Atlanta, GA (US);
Abstract
The invention is directed toward methods for assisting in interpreting medical images, especially useful for segmenting images produced by computed tomography or micro-computed tomography. In one embodiment, the invention is directed to method comprising initially identifying the images of the bones from a medical image, estimating a preliminary boundary of the bones, and subsequently segmenting the bones using a snake algorithm initialized by the preliminary boundary of the bones. The results can then be used to establish morphometric measurements from the medical images based on the segmented bone boundaries. In one embodiment of the present invention, the snake algorithm used is a continuous parametric Fourier series representation to fit and optimize the preliminary boundary of the bones to a more accurate representation of the segmented bone boundary from the data included in the image.