US 8,898,031 B2 · Method for visualizing and quantifying the changes in an organic or non-organic structure in the human body

Abstract

The invention relates to a method for visualizing and/or quantifying structures, in particular structures within an object and/or subject, preferably within the human body. The method according to the invention is in particular characterized by the automatic or semiautomatic calculation of a decomposition of the structure into components as well as by at least one of the following steps: (i) the optionally sole visualization of one or more of these components, in particular in case of a superimposed representation of the structure for two or more points in time, and/or (ii) the representation of different components in different colours/shades/patterns, and/or (iii) the calculation of quantitative parameters describing the structure and/or its components, separately for the individual components, and/or (iv) the calculation of parameters measuring the interrelationship between specific components.

Claims18

Dependent claims

A method for visualizing and/or quantifying at least one structure, in particular a surface representation of said structure, by an automatic or semiautomatic calculation of a decomposition of said structure, in particular surface representation, into components as well as by at least one of the following steps:

optionally sole visualization of one or more of said components, in particular in case of a superimposed representation of the structure for two or more points in time;
representation of different components in different colours/shades/patterns;
calculation of quantitative parameters which can be assigned to the components, separately for the individual components, specifically parameters, which describe the individual components or the change of said individual components and
calculation of parameters which measure the interrelationship between specific components.

1 more element

A method for improving an approximation of the surface representation of a structure precalculated from a two- or three-dimensional image data set by at least one of the following steps which can be also carried out several times:

adjustment, preferably by using a technique of registering the aforementioned approximation to a model surface representation of the entire structure and/or the possible components of said structure and preferably based thereon substantially the removal of parts of the approximation which do not belong to the structure, wherein preferably elements of the approximation of the surface representation are marked and/or assessed relying on the adjustment on account of their distance to the model surface representation;
search for further parts of the surface representation of the structure based on the possible components of the model surface representation in the proximities of the already calculated surface representations of the structure in the image.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Method for visualizing and quantifying the changes in an organic or non-organic structure in the human body

Life of this patent

Method for visualizing and quantifying the changes in an organic or non-organic structure in the human body

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims18