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AssigneeMeVis Medical Solutions, Inc.
InventorAlexander C. Schneider
Estimating the term…
A CAD system pre-analyzes a medical image to automatically determine whether contrast agent was introduced into the patient before forming that image. In one embodiment, contrast agent detection is performed by comparing the voxel values in known blood-containing areas to voxel values of known water-containing areas, and if there is a substantial difference above a preferred threshold, then it is determined that this patient was indeed injected with the contrast agent. Upon finding that the patient was indeed injected with contrast agent, the CAD algorithm then automatically performs both a detection algorithm that uses the contrast agent and one that does not and notifies the clinician that both sets of results are available to look at. However, if it is determined that the patient was, not injected with contrast agent, the CAD algorithm does not perform the algorithm that uses the contrast agent does not give the user the option to view any results from such algorithm. The invention may be practiced with a variety of imaging technologies some of which may not require an explicit comparison of the voxel values from the blood-containing and water-containing areas.
1-6. (canceled)
The computer program product of claim 19 wherein said medical image is a three-dimensional lung volume, said first CAD abnormality detection algorithm is a lung nodule detection algorithm, and said second CAD abnormality detection algorithm is a pulmonary embolism detection algorithm.
8-9. (canceled)
The computer program product of claim 22 wherein the gray scale values are expressed in Hounsfield units.
The computer program product of claim 22 wherein the first predetermined threshold is 100 Hounsfield units.
The computer program product of claim 22 wherein the second predetermined threshold is 15% of the total number of image pixels in the medical image.
A computer program product, stored on a computer-readable medium, for CAD analysis of a medical image of a patient, said computer program product comprising instructions for:
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A computer program product, stored on a computer-readable medium, for performing CAD analysis of a medical image of a patient, the computer program product comprising instructions operable to cause a programmable processor to:
A system for facilitating review of a medical image of a patient by a reviewing clinician, comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.