Inventors:
Sun Young Park - San Diego CA, US
Dustin Michael Sargent - San Diego CA, US
Rolf Holger Wolters - Honolulu HI, US
Ulf Peter Gustafsson - San Diego CA, US
International Classification:
A61B 1/303, A61B 6/00
Abstract:
The present invention is a diagnosis support system providing automated guidance to a user by automated retrieval of similar disease images and user feedback. High resolution standardized labeled and unlabeled, annotated and non-annotated images of diseased tissue in a database are clustered, preferably with expert feedback. An image retrieval application automatically computes image signatures for a query image and a representative image from each cluster, by segmenting the images into regions and extracting image features in the regions to produce feature vectors, and then comparing the feature vectors using a similarity measure. Preferably the features of the image signatures are extended beyond shape, color and texture of regions, by features specific to the disease. Optionally, the most discriminative features are used in creating the image signatures. A list of the most similar images is returned in response to a query. Keyword query is also supported.