RULES-BASED APPROACH FOR PROCESSING MEDICAL IMAGES

A technique flexibly applies pre-programmed rules that specify the manner in which medical image data is to be classified or otherwise processed. A rules-based system selects from the pre-programmed rules, with different rules being used based on different doctors' preferences, such as during contrast agent studies. The rules-based system is initially “taught” how to apply a doctor's rules via a sample data image set, and then automatically applies the same rules to that doctor's image data whenever that image data is subsequently provided, thereby avoiding the need for doctors to constantly reconfigure a system with their own rules repetitively for each and every image or to otherwise place the burden of processing on the doctor. The programmed rules can include rules from the available literature—the doctors or other users are free to select from these available rules, modify/customize them to generate new rules, or provide completely new rules.