Abstract: The present invention includes a utility for determining the severity of a stenosis in a blood vessel. In one aspect, a method for improving DSA image quality includes: (1) registration of the mask and bolus images prior to subtracting procedure to reduce the artifacts from misalignment; (2) enhancement of the registered DSA image by an anisotropic diffusion technique and a nonlinear normalization technique; and (3) detecting the boundary of blood vessel and quantitatively measuring percentage stenosis, which may be done automatically.

Abstract: An image guidance system is provided for improving tissue culture extraction where the tissue is extracted under the guidance of first and second knowledge-based systems. The first knowledge-based system provides initial suggested regions of interest for tissue biopsy in an internal organ. These regions of interest are then confirmed as being of interest of being benign by the second knowledge-based system. Information from two different sources may provide a more accurate, intelligent and robust method that helps in selecting biopsy sites accurately, such that suspicious regions are not overlooked and the benign regions are not unnecessarily operated upon. This not only helps in better diagnosis and treatment, but also helps reduce pain to the patient, in addition to reducing wastage of resources and invaluable time.