Ernst Dr. Bartsch

Intelligent data splitting for volume data

We describe a system that automatically extracts body sections of interest from volume data sets obtained from major medical modalities. This is critical as an effort to save storage and transmission bandwidth and improve data sharing efficiency. The data to be split is stored in a series of files, and each of the files contains one axial slice image. This is how the DICOM data is stored. The splitting of volume data will therefore be applied in the axial direction. The core of the system is an algorithm module that automatically detects lines of separation in the axial direction of the data. Afterwards, the system will copy the files that contain the desired section of slice images to the destination, according to the detected separation lines. To obtain the split lines, features are extracted from human anatomies that are specific to each body section. The method and principle can be applied to major modalities where the extraction of various data sections is needed.