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:
Apr. 19, 2016
Filed:
Feb. 28, 2014
Siemens Aktiengesellschaft, Munich, DE;
Qian Wang, Chapel Hill, NC (US);
Le Lu, Chalfont, PA (US);
Dijia Wu, North Brunswick, NJ (US);
Shaohua Kevin Zhou, Plainsboro, NJ (US);
Siemens Aktiengesellschaft, München, DE;
Abstract
A method and apparatus for automatic spinal canal segmentation in medical image data, such as computed tomography (CT) image data, is disclosed. An initial set of spinal canal voxels is detected in the 3D medical image using a trained classifier. A spinal canal topology defined by a current set of spinal canal voxels is refined based on an estimated medial line of the spinal canal. Seed points are sampled based on the refined spinal canal topology. An updated set of spinal canal voxels is detected in the 3D medical image using random walks segmentation based on the sampled seed points. The spinal canal topology refinement, seed points sampling, and random walks segmentation are repeated in order to provide cascaded random walks segmentation to generate a final spinal canal segmentation result.