Method of automatically correcting mis-orientation of medical images

This invention relates to a method and image processing apparatus for automatically correcting mis-orientation of medical images. One or more image processing software modules are used to extract (101) anatomical areas from the medical images. It is determined (103) whether the extracted anatomical areas correspond to reference anatomical areas, but the reference anatomical areas have associated thereto data indicating the orientation of the reference anatomical areas. If the extracted anatomical areas correspond with the reference anatomical areas, the true orientation of the extracted anatomical areas is determined (105) by realigning the medical image until the orientation of the extracted anatomical areas corresponds to the orientation of the reference anatomical areas.