There is developed a method for automating the process of finding reference lines and angles on the medical X-ray images. It is required to find the values of these characteristics between the distal femur and proximal tibia, for which task it is necessary to determine the joint line of each bone and anatomical line. The paper presents a scheme of the automated determining of boundaries of areas and constructing reference angles and lines. Automatic construction of the lines permits to estimate the state of the patient with the help of a number of known parameters characterizing angles. This makes it possible to significantly reduce the time spent on the analysis of the X-ray image, and make its estimate in the case when the radiologist cannot make the exact diagnosis. The created software product has demonstrated high efficiency of the proposed scheme of analysis.
Keywords: Image processing; analysis of medical X-ray images; reference lines and angles, analysis of the knee joint