| abstract |
Techniques include automatically detecting a lymph node in a scanned image of a body without human intervention, using one or more of three approaches. First, a subset of scanned images is determined, which belongs to one anatomical domain. A search region for lymph tissue is in a particular spatial relationship outside an anatomical object in the domain. Second, scanned images are segmented without human intervention to determine a boundary of a particular lymph node. The scanned images and outline data are received. Some of these embodiments automatically segment by determining an external marker, based on the outline data, and an internal marker, based on a geometric center of the outline data or thresholds determined automatically inside detected edges, or both, for a marker-controlled watershed algorithm. Third, based on lymph node data at a particular time, a second scanned image at a different time is segmented automatically, without human intervention. |