Pattern recognition in medical imaging by means of the Hough transform of curves

The Hough transform is a classical pattern recognition algorithm used to detect straight lines, circles and ellipses in images. Recently, algebraic geometry arguments have been applied to generalize this approach to special classes of curves. Here we provide preliminary results showing that this method can be utilized for the recognition of compact bone profiles in clinical X-ray tomography images and therefore potentially represents an effective computational tool for applications in hematology and oncology.