US Patent 7736313 Detecting and classifying lesions in ultrasound images

A method for determining a candidate lesion region within an ultrasound image. The method includes the steps of: accessing a digital ultrasound image of anatomical tissue; segmenting spatially contiguous pixels in the ultrasound image into a plurality of regions in accordance with substantially similar intensity values and spatial smoothness constraints; and selecting, from the plurality of regions, one or more candidate lesion regions having an intensity value lower than a pre-determined intensity value. In one arrangement, the one or more candidate lesion region is classified into at least one of the following classes: benign, malignant, or unknown.