Appeal No. 96-1268
Application 08/013,739
action dated November 15, 1994, the Examiner entered the above amendment. Thus, only claims
7 through 12 are before us for our consideration.
The invention relates to a method for determining the shape and location of an irradiation
field on a recording medium when a radiation image is to be read out from the recording medium,
on which the radiation image has been recorded.
Claim 7, the only independent claim is reproduced as follows:
7. A method for determining the shape and location of an irradiation field, wherein an
image signal, which is made up of a series of image signal components representing a radiation
image of an object, is obtained from a recording medium, on which the radiation image has been
recorded, contour points, which are considered as being present on a contour of the irradiation
field on the recording medium, are detected from image signal components corresponding to
positions on the recording medium located along each of a plurality of lines in a respective
plurality of radial directions, which lines radiate from a predetermined point located inside of the
irradiation field on the recording medium towards edges of the recording medium, and a resulting
region surrounded by line segments connecting the thus detected contour points is detected as the
irradiation field,
the method for determining the shape and location of an irradiation field comprising the
steps of:
i) carrying out differentiation processing on the image signal components corresponding
to positions on the recording medium located along each of the plurality of lines in the plurality of
radial directions, differentiated values being thereby obtained from the differentiation processing,
ii) with respect to each of said plurality of lines in the plurality of radial directions,
making judgements as to whether or not a differentiated value increases beyond a predetermined
value while the differentiation processing is proceeding from an image signal component
corresponding to said predetermined point, towards an image signal component corresponding to
an edge of the recording medium,
iii) in cases where it has been judged at step ii) that differentiated values increasing beyond
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