BRIGHTNESS AND CONTRAST INVARIANT DETECTION OF VERTEBRA PEDICLES

A system and method for detecting pedicle positions in an image, in accordance with the present invention, includes providing a set of feature prototypes for a plurality of pedicle positions and orientations, providing an input image to be analyzed for pedicle positions and orientations, and determining intensity curvatures for a pedicle in the input image. The intensity curvatures are transformed to determine a feature vector for the pedicle in the input image. The feature vector is correlated to the feature prototypes to determine most likely positions and orientations of the pedicle.