Method of segmenting anatomic entities in digital medical images

1. A computer program product embodied in a computer readable medium for performing a method of segmenting an anatomic entity in a digital medical image comprising:

defining, for each of a number of landmarks in said image, an initial position of said landmark,

sampling a neighborhood around said initial position, said neighborhood comprising a number of candidate locations of said landmark,

associating a cost with each of said candidate locations,

optimizing a cost function expressing a weighted sum of overall gray level cost and overall shape cost for all candidate locations,

defining a segmented anatomic entity as a path through a selected combination of said candidate locations for which combination said cost function is optimized, and wherein

said overall shape cost is a combination of all individual costs of connection vectors, said connection vectors connecting successive landmarks, for all landmarks, wherein said individual shape cost is expressed by the Mahalanobis distance defined as the distance of a connection vector between two successive landmarks to the mean connection vector weighted with the inverse of the covariance matrix, said mean connection vector and covariance matrix being retrieved from a shape model of said anatomic entity.

2. The computer program product as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said shape model is obtained by

sampling a manually segmented outline of said anatomic entity at a number of landmark points;

computing connection vectors or connection vector differences between successive landmark points;

computing a mean connection vector or mean connection vector difference for successive pairs of landmark points;

computing a covariance matrix of connection vectors or connection vector differences;

identifying said mean connection vector and covariance matrix as a geometric model of said anatomic entity.

3. The computer program product as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said cost function is optimized by dynamic programming.

4. The computer program product as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said number of candidate locations is reduced by selecting those with minimal total gray value cost, said total gray value cost being the sum over all feature images of all gray value costs for the candidate position in said neighborhood, said gray value cost expressed as a Mahalanobis distance defined as the distance of a gray value profile at the candidate location to a corresponding mean profile weighted with the inverse of a covariance matrix, said mean profile and covariance matrix retrieved from a gray value model associated with said anatomic entity.

5. The computer program product as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said neighborhood comprises a rectangular grid of sampling points.

6. The computer program product as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said neighbourhood comprises a circular profile.

7. A computer readable medium comprising computer executable program code for performing a method of segmenting an anatomic entity in a digital medical image comprising:

defining, for each of a number of landmarks in said image, an initial position of said landmark,

sampling a neighborhood around said initial position, said neighborhood comprising a number of candidate locations of said landmark,

associating a cost with each of said candidate locations,

optimizing a cost function expressing a weighted sum of overall gray level cost and overall shape cost for all candidate locations,

defining a segmented anatomic entity as a path through a selected combination of said candidate locations for which combination said cost function is optimized, and wherein

said overall shape cost is a combination of all individual costs of connection vectors, said connection vectors connecting successive landmarks, for all landmarks, wherein said individual shape cost is expressed by the Mahalanobis distance defined as the distance of a connection vector between two successive landmarks to the mean connection vector weighted with the inverse of the covariance matrix, said mean connection vector and covariance matrix being retrieved from a shape model of said anatomic entity.

8. The computer readable medium as claimed in claim 7 , wherein said shape model is obtained by

sampling a manually segmented outline of said anatomic entity at a number of landmark points;

computing connection vectors or connection vector differences between successive landmark points;

computing a mean connection vector or mean connection vector difference for successive pairs of landmark points;

computing a covariance matrix of connection vectors or connection vector differences;

identifying said mean connection vector and covariance matrix as a geometric model of said anatomic entity.

9. The computer readable medium as claimed in claim 7 , wherein said cost function is optimized by dynamic programming.

10. The computer readable medium as claimed in claim 7 , wherein said number of candidate locations is reduced by selecting those with minimal total gray value cost, said total gray value cost being the sum over all feature images of all gray value costs for the candidate position in said neighborhood, said gray value cost expressed as a Mahalanobis distance defined as the distance of a gray value profile at the candidate location to a corresponding mean profile weighted with the inverse of a covariance matrix, said mean profile and covariance matrix retrieved from a gray value model associated with said anatomic entity.

11. The computer readable medium as claimed in claim 7 , wherein said neighborhood comprises a rectangular grid of sampling points.

12. The computer readable medium as claimed in claim 7 , wherein said neighbourhood comprises a circular profile.

13. A method of segmenting an anatomic entity in a digital medical image comprising:

defining, for each of a number of landmarks in said image, an initial position of said landmark,

sampling a neighborhood around said initial position, said neighborhood comprising a number of candidate locations of said landmark,

associating a cost with each of said candidate locations,

optimizing a cost function expressing a weighted sum of overall gray level cost and overall shape cost for all candidate locations,

defining a segmented anatomic entity as a path through a selected combination of said candidate locations for which combination said cost function is optimized, and wherein

said overall shape cost is a combination of all individual costs of connection vectors, said connection vectors connecting successive landmarks, for all landmarks, wherein said individual shape cost is expressed by the Mahalanobis distance defined as the distance of a connection vector between two successive landmarks to the mean connection vector weighted with the inverse of the covariance matrix, said mean connection vector and covariance matrix being retrieved from a shape model of said anatomic entity.

14. The method according to claim 13 wherein said shape model is obtained by

sampling a manually segmented outline of said anatomic entity at a number of landmark points;

computing connection vectors or connection vector differences between successive landmark points;

computing a mean connection vector or mean connection vector difference for successive pairs of landmark points;

computing a covariance matrix of connection vectors or connection vector differences;

identifying said mean connection vector and covariance matrix as a geometric model of said anatomic entity.

15. The method according to claim 13 wherein said cost function is optimized by dynamic programming.

16. The method according to claim 13 wherein said number of candidate locations is reduced by selecting those with minimal total gray value cost, said total gray value cost being the sum over all feature images of all gray value costs for the candidate position in said neighborhood, said gray value cost expressed as a Mahalanobis distance defined as the distance of a gray value profile at the candidate location to a corresponding mean profile weighted with the inverse of a covariance matrix, said mean profile and covariance matrix retrieved from a gray value model associated with said anatomic entity.

17. The method according to claim 13 wherein said neighborhood comprises a rectangular grid of sampling points.

18. The method according to claim 13 wherein said neighbourhood comprises a circular profile.