METHOD FOR ESTIMATION OF SIZE AND ANALYSIS OF CONNECTIVITY OF BODIES IN 2- AND 3-DIMENSIONAL DATA

A method for performing region growing in a data volume that accounts for noise in the data on a probabilistic basis. The data volume is divided into discrete cells, and a probability distribution for each cell's datum value is calculated. Each probability distribution is randomly sampled to generate one probabilistic, noise-free realization for the data volume, and region growing is performed using selected criteria. The process is repeated for different realizations until sufficient statistics are accumulated to estimate the probable size and connectivity of objects discovered.