Method and system for the automated temporal subtraction of medical images
First Claim
1. A method for detecting interval change, comprising:
- obtaining a first three-dimensional image of a subject;
obtaining a second three-dimensional image of said subject;
matching said first and second images;
nonlinearly warping said first image to produce a warped image; and
subtracting said warped image from said second image.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Method and system for the detection of interval change in medical images. Three dimensional images, such as previous and current section images in CT scans, are obtained. An anatomic feature, such as the lungs, is used to select sections containing lung by a gray-level thresholding technique. The section correspondence between the current and previous scans is determined automatically. The initial registration of the corresponding sections in the two scans is achieved by a rotation correction and a cross-correlation technique. A more accurate registration between the corresponding current and previous section images is achieved by local matching. A nonlinear warping process which is also based on the cross-correlation technique is applied to the previous image to yield a warped image after the matching. The final subtracted section images were derived by subtracting of the previous section images from the corresponding current section images. Interval changes such as a change in tumor size and a newly developed pleural effusion are enhanced significantly.
31 Citations
64 Claims
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1. A method for detecting interval change, comprising:
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obtaining a first three-dimensional image of a subject;
obtaining a second three-dimensional image of said subject;
matching said first and second images;
nonlinearly warping said first image to produce a warped image; and
subtracting said warped image from said second image. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64)
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35. A method for detecting interval change, comprising:
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obtaining a first image of a subject;
obtaining a second image of said subject;
matching said first and second images in a scanning direction;
detecting an interval change in matched first and second images.
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39. A method of detecting interval change, comprising:
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obtaining a first scan of a subject having a plurality of sections;
obtaining a second scan of said subject having a plurality of sections;
matching three-dimensionally said first and second scans;
matching two-dimensionally corresponding sections of said first and second scans; and
detecting an interval change between said first and second scans.
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47. A computer program product, comprising:
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a computer storage medium and a computer program code mechanism embedded in the computer storage medium for processing an image generated in an image processing apparatus, the computer program code mechanism comprising;
a first code device configured to match first and second images of a subject in a scanning direction;
a second code device configured to detect an interval change in matched first and second images.
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57. An interval change detecting system, comprising:
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one of a three-dimensional image acquisition device and a three-dimensional image storage device;
a scanning direction image matching device connected to one of said image acquisition device and said image storage device;
an image subtraction device connected to said matching device.
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Specification