METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATIC ORIENTATION OF LOCAL VISUALIZATION TECHNIQUES FOR VESSEL STRUCTURES

摘要

A method of orienting a tubular structure in a digital image is provided, wherein the image comprises a plurality of intensities corresponding to a domain of points in a -dimensional space. The method includes selecting a point in the domain of the image, computing (101), in a neighborhood of the selected point, a gradient of the image, computing (102) an elementary structure tensor at the selected point, determining a structure tensor (103) for the selected point, and finding (104) the eigenvalues of the structure tensors. The eigenvector corresponding to the smallest eigenvalue (105) is aligned with the tubular structure. A cartwheel projection can be calculated (106) about an axis defined by the eigenvector that is aligned with the tubular structure.