Synopsis of multiple segmentation results for breast lesion characterization

US8718341B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• KONINIKLIJKE PHILIPS N.V. · NL

Inventors

• Thomas Buelow · Großhansdorf, DE
• Rafael Wiemker · Kisdorf, DE
• Martin Bergtholdt · Hamburg, DE
• Lina Arbash Meinel · Eindhoven, NL

Key dates

• Filing date: Nov 16, 2009
• Grant date: May 6, 2014
• Expiry date: Jul 18, 2030

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06T2207/30096
• WIPO field: Computer technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

When characterizing a tumor or lesion as malignant or benign, a system (10) receives an image of the lesion volume (50), employs a processor (12) to perform a raw segmentation of the image, the results of which are stored to memory (14). Then processor then executes a hole-filling procedure to fill in dark areas in the image of the lesion representing necrotic tissue that absorbed little or no contrast agent, and optionally a leakage removal procedure to remove image voxels associated with non-lesion tissue, e.g., blood vessels, in which the contrast agent was present during imaging, to generate a complete lesion volume. A voxel analyzer (18) assesses a number of voxels included in the raw segmentation of the lesion image, and the final segmentation (e.g., after filling and optional leakage removal). A segmentation comparator (20) computes a ratio of dark area voxels related to necrotic tissue detected after the raw segmentation to total voxels detected in the final image segmentation. The ratio is then used to determine a likelihood of malignancy, with a higher ratio indicating a higher likelihood.