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Autosegmentation/autocontouring system and method

  • US 6,249,594 B1
  • Filed: 05/29/1998
  • Issued: 06/19/2001
  • Est. Priority Date: 03/07/1997
  • Status: Expired due to Term
First Claim
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1. A method for autocontouring a two-dimensional representation of a predetermined bounded object that may be part of an image created by a predetermined modality, with the image being defined by a plurality of pixels having property values representative of what is on the image, comprising the steps of:

  • (a) generating within the object an initial region of interest (ROI) with a boundary defined by a first supervised classifier based on properties of pixels inside the object compared with properties of pixels outside the object;

    (b) generating a second supervised classifier based on the properties of pixels inside the ROI;

    (c) expanding the ROI boundary using the second supervised classifier by evaluating the properties of a layer of pixels adjacent to a current exterior boundary of the ROI based on comparing pixel properties of each pixel in the current exterior layer to the properties of the pixels within the ROI, reclassifying the pixels in the current exterior layer as pixels to be included as part of the pixels within the ROI if the properties of discrete pixels in the current exterior layer substantially match in a predetermined manner the properties of the pixels within the ROI, and re-numerating the boundary of the ROI based on any reclassified pixels;

    (d) generating a parametric representation of a contour based at least in part on two-dimensional coordinates of a predetermined number of points on the ROI boundary determined in step (c);

    (e) generating an optimal objective function and a corresponding parametric contour;

    (f) repeating steps (c)-(e) one exterior pixel layer at a time until a maximum match is captured;

    (g) selecting a largest-valued optimal objective function that has been generated according to steps (e) and (f); and

    (h) creating a contour based of the objective function selected at step (g).

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