MR imaging of lesions and detection of malignant tumors
AssigneeGeneral Electric Company
InventorErika Schneider
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A 3D MR image is acquired before injection of a contrast agent and an enhanced 3D image is acquired after injection of the contrast agent. The two images are registered and then subtracted to remove background and to highlight lesion voxels. Lesion objects are identified by connecting contiguous lesion objects. Volume and surface area of any continuous lesion object in a discrete digital image are then calculated. Malignant lesions are identified by determining the ratio of volume to surface area for each lesion object. Malignant tumors are identified when this ratio drops below a preset threshold.
Claims10
A method for identifying irregular shaped objects in a subject anatomy of a patient, comprising the steps of:
- acquiring a desired image of the subject anatomy with a digital imaging system;
- identifying voxels in the desired image which depict objects;
- determining the surface of objects containing the identified voxels;
- calculating the volume of each object;
- calculating the surface area of each object;
- calculating the ratio of volume and surface area of each object;
- and
- identifying irregularly-shaped objects when the ratio crosses a preselected threshold value.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.