Abstract: The invention relates to an apparatus and a method for registering a first image (A1) with a second stored image (A2) of an object such as the chest (2) of a patient. The images (A1, A2) may, for instance, have been produced by an X-ray CT system (1) and be used in the trend control of lung tumors. The images (A1, A2) are automatically segmented into various object constituents (a, b, c). Following this, only image areas (B1, B2) of object constituents (b) relevant to the task in hand are registered. In the trend control of lung tumors, for instance, a registration of the lung areas (b) is sufficient.

Abstract: Ground glass opacities in the lung are non-solid nebular-like shadows in the parenchyma tissue of the lung, which may be precursors of a lung cancer. According to the present invention, ground glass opacities may automatically be determined on the basis of a texture analysis of the parenchyma. Advantageously, according to the present invention, a robust and reliable determination of ground glass opacities may be provided, even if vessels, lung walls, airspace or bronchi walls are present within the local neighborhood of the ground glass opacity.

Abstract: Volume measurement of for example a tumor in a 3D image dataset is an important and often performed task. The problem is to segment the tumor out of this volume in order to measure its dimensions. This problem is complicated by the fact that the tumors are often connected to vessels and other organs. According to the present invention, an automated method and corresponding device and computer software are provided, which analyze a volume of interest around a singled out tumor, and which, by virtue of a 3D distance transform and a region drawing scheme advantageously allow to automatically segment a tumor out of a given volume.

Abstract: The invention relates to a method for the formation of a selective rendering of body structures of an object to be examined from a primary image data set. It is the object of the invention to achieve simple and fast selection or deselection given body structures. In order to achieve this object, a method is proposed which comprises the following steps:—combining a plurality of pixels so as to form at least one pixel group (BG1-BG16) which comprises each time pixels which are associated with the pixel group in conformity with predetermined filter criteria,—forming at least one pixel list by selection and/or deselection of at least one pixel group,—forming a filtered secondary image data set in which the pixels of the pixel groups of the at least one pixel list formed are marked, and—forming the rendering from the secondary image data set, the marked elements being separately rendered, notably in highlighted or suppressed form.

Abstract: The invention relates to a method of forming an isolated visualization of body structures from a 3D image data set, which method includes the steps of forming a binary data set in which all image elements contained in the 3D image data set are classified as image elements which are to be visualized in isolated form and image elements which are not to be visualized, where filtering of the image values is performed by means of limit values of the image values and all image elements of the binary data set of image structures contained in the 3D image data set which are smaller than a predetermined size are selected, of forming a filtered data set by entering the image values of the original 3D image data set for the image elements which are characterized as image elements to be visualized in isolated form in the binary data set, and of forming the visualization of the isolated body structure from the filtered data set.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a method for automatically detecting contours of, for example, shutters or implants in an X-ray image. A number of closed paths is derived from the X-ray image, one of said closed paths being selected, in dependence on the contrast along the closed paths, as the contour. The closed paths may be derived from a set of line candidates on which contour pixel candidates are situated. The contour pixel candidates can be derived from a high-pass or gradient version of the X-ray image.

Abstract: The invention relates to an examination method whereby a respective spectrum with a number of spectral values is measured for a number of locations. Collective evaluation of the old spectra is enabled by the following steps:a) formation of a data matrix from the spectral vectors formed by the series of spectral values of a respective spectrum, the spectral vectors being arranged in the columns (or in the rows) of the data matrix in a location-dependent manner,b) singular value decomposition of the data matrix in order to obtain three matrices whose product corresponds to the data matrix, the first (third) matrix consisting of spectrally dependent vectors, whereas the second matrix is a diagonal matrix and the third (first) matrix consists of location-dependent vectors,c) evaluation of at least one of the three matrices.

Abstract: Chromatography apparatus capable of deriving optimum conditions for an analysis includes data processing means which comprises calculating means (20) to be supplied with initial conditions (24) entered by the chromatographer and which may be calculated from the results of an initial chromatogram, limits and requirements (25) relating to limiting values of parameters of the chromatograph and to the required selectivity and sensitivity of the analysis and which are entered by the chromatographer, and the detector time constant (23) which is selectable, within limits, by the chromatographer. The data processing means also includes a column data base (21) which contains data specifying the available separating columns and a detector data base (22) which contains data specifying the available detectors.The optimization criteria are the minimum possible analysis time coupled with adequate peak separation and sensitivity.