1. A method of analyzing an image represented by a digital image representation of image elements, the method comprising the steps of: segmenting the image by subjecting the digital image representation to an iterative thresholding operation until a stopping criterion is reached; finding clusters of adjacent voxels of the image elements by analyzing results of each iteration of the iterative thresholding operation; building a hierarchical representation of the image by establishing relations between the clusters found in the results of each iteration of the iterative thresholding operation; assigning a type class to a leaf cluster of the hierarchical representation; propagating the type class towards a top of the hierarchical representation using propagation rules; and generating a mask marking locations of the image elements of the type class by merging the locations of the image elements contained in the clusters that were assigned to the type class through propagation.