METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR BINARY AND QUASI-BINARY ATLAS-BASED AUTO-CONTOURING OF VOLUME SETS IN MEDICAL IMAGES

摘要

The present invention is a set of algorithms or calculations that may be applied to efficiently use atlas-based segmentation using QBinary (binary and/or quasi-binary) representations of images and/or their ROIs. A QBinary representation of an image or a part of an image (for example, such as a ROD may be a binary image (for example, such as a code with 1 bit) and or a quasi-binary image (for example, such as a code with more than 1 and less than 8 bits) that serves to represent that image and/or ROI in an atlas. Two-dimensional QBinary codes may be used to both construct QBinary atlases and QBinary-controlled atlases with or without QB-Codes registration. Additionally, the present invention may offer a set of algorithms to sequentially auto-contour (or auto-segment) individual slices of a volume set of digital images without or without QB-Codes registration, provided one slice is semi-automatically contoured by a human operator.

主权项

1. A method of QB-Code generation to efficiently use atlas-based segmentation using any of binary or quasi-binary representations of image regions of interest, or a combination of binary and quasi-binary representation of image regions of interest, said method characterized in that it comprises the following steps:
a. identifying one or more regions of interest in an image; b. generating a QB-code for the one or more regions of interest by searching to identify an applicable QB-Code in any of the following: a binary atlas; or a quasi-binary atlas; and c. determining a gold standard contour, said gold standard contour being attached to the generated QB-Code.