A method for segmenting coronary vessels in digitized cardiac images includes providing a digitized cardiac image, providing a seed point in the image, selecting a volume-of-interest about the seed point, performing a local segmentation in the volume-of-interest, including initializing a connected component with the seed point and a threshold intensity value to the intensity of the seed point, adding a point to the connected component if the point is adjacent to the connected component and if the intensity of the point is greater than or equal to the threshold value, lowering the threshold intensity value, and computing an attribute value of the connected component, wherein if a discontinuity in the attribute value is detected, the local segmentation is terminated, wherein a local segmentation mask of a vessel is obtained.