Patent US 6,415,046

A method and apparatus for the early detection of tissue pathology using wavelet decomposition, such as Cardiomyopathy, for the early detection and diagnosis of disease using multi-dimensional non-invasive imaging techniques. The apparatus for early detection of tissue pathology includes a tissue texture quantifier apparatus having a wavelet decomposer for decomposing a region-of-interest (ROI) of a digitized image of anatomical tissue into vertical, horizontal and diagonal detail coefficients and a tissue pathology evaluator having a standard reference model. The tissue texture quantifier further includes a wavelet calculator to calculate the energy content for each of the vertical detail coefficient, the horizontal detail coefficient and the diagonal detail coefficient. Moreover, the tissue texture quantifier includes a summer for summing the energy content of the vertical detail coefficient, the horizontal detail coefficient and the diagonal detail coefficient and a normalizer for normalizing all energy content and the summed energy content.