A METHOD, A SYSTEM AND A COMPUTER PROGRAM FOR IMAGE SEGMENTATION

摘要

The invention relates to a method 1 of image segmentation where in step 2 a prior model representative of a structure conceived to be segmented in an image is accessed. Preferably, the image comprises a medical diagnostic image. Still preferably, the medical diagnostic image is prepared in a DICOM format, whereby supplementary information is stored besides diagnostic data. In these cases the method 1 according to the invention advantageously proceeds to step 3, where the supplementary information is extracted from electronic file 5, comprising for example suitable patient-related information 5a and/or suitable structure-related information 5b. Examples of the patient-related information comprise a patient's age, sex, group, etc., whereas examples of the structure-related information may comprise an anatomic location of the structure, such as rectum, bladder, lung etc, or the suspected / diagnosed pathology of the patient. In an alternative embodiment of the method 1 according to the invention, the supplementary information is provided by a human operator in step 7, where he can enter suitable supplementary information 9a, 9b using a user interface 9. When the supplementary information is loaded, the method 1 according to the invention proceeds to step 4 in which the prior model is being changed using the supplementary information yielding a further model. In step 6 the method 1 performs the image segmentation using the thus obtained further model and in step 8 the results of the segmentation step may be visualized on a suitable viewer.