Method and system for segmenting and identifying at least one tubular structure in medical images

Abstract

This invention concerns a computer implemented method for segmenting and identifying at least one tubular structure, having a 3D tree layout and located in at least one body part of a subject, in medical images showing a volume region of interest of said subject containing said body part(s), and for providing a labelled 3D image of said structure(s), said method mainly comprising the steps of: providing a set of 2D medical images corresponding to respective mutually distinct sectional views across said region of interest containing said body part(s), the planes of said medical images being all perpendicular to a given direction or all mutually intersecting at a given straight line, segmenting the visible section(s) of the concerned body part(s) present in each one of said 2D medical images, which comprises in particular the complete linear outline or external boundary of said body part(s) visible in the considered 2D image, and creating a corresponding 2D body part masking image, pre-processing each 2D medical image, by applying the corresponding body part masking image to it and so producing processed images containing only the image data of the original 2D image which are related to said body part(s), segmenting the tubular structure(s) in said resulting pre-processed images, possibly by segmenting tubular structures of different kinds in differentiated segmentation processes, performing the previous steps with at least one other set of 2D medical images corresponding to other respective distinct sectional views, along other mutually parallel or intersecting planes, of said same volume region of interest containing said same body part(s), merging the results of the tubular structure segmentations of the different sets of pre-processed images, in order to provide a labelled 3D image of said tubular structure(s) of one or different kind(s).

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.