A system for segmenting a target organ tumor from an image includes a
background model builder, a foreground model builder and a tumor region
locator. The background model builder uses an intensity distribution
estimate of voxels in an organ region in an image to build a background
model. The foreground model builder uses an intensity distribution
estimate of voxels in a target organ tumor to build a first foreground
model. The tumor region locator uses the background model and the first
foreground model to segment the target organ tumor to obtain a first
segmentation result.