Apparatus and method for indicating likely computer-detected false positives in medical imaging data

A method of processing medical image data representing at least one first region of a patient including at least one feature of interest automatically detected by a computer, the method comprising:

• with a computer determining at least one second region, included within a respective said first region, in which the at least one second region computer-detected features of interest have a significant likelihood of representing a false positive automatically detected by a computer, said false positives being caused by at least one of motion, streak artifacts, and photon-starvation wherein detecting the false positive automatically by the computer includes:
• transforming the medical image data utilizing a slice-wise 2D transformation to generate a distance value for each voxel;
• determining an influence region of each voxel which has a displacement-discontinuity value which exceeds a predetermined threshold;
• and
• automatically identifying the influence region as said false positives;
• and
• displaying the at least one first region on a display device and displaying the at least one second region on the display device differently from one or more parts of said first region not containing features of interest having a significant likelihood of representing false positives automatically detected by the computer.

A medical imaging system comprising:

• one or more processors configured to:
• in a region of a medical image, automatically detect features of interest by the processor;
• determine at least one sub-region of the region in which sub-region features of interest automatically detected by the processor have a significant likelihood of representing a false positive automatically detected by the processor, wherein detecting the false positive automatically by the computer includes:
• transforming the medical image data utilizing a slice-wise 2D transformation to generate a distance value for each voxel;
• determining an influence region of each voxel which has a displacement-discontinuity value which exceeds a predetermined threshold;
• and
• automatically identifying the influence region as said false positives;
• and
• generate graphical markers which indicate the sub-region;
• and
• a display device which displays the medical image, the graphical markers, and the features of interest automatically detected by the processor;
• wherein determining the sub-region includes determining with the one or more processors sub-regions which are subject to at least one of:
• motion;
• streak artifacts;
• and
• photon-starvation.