1. A computer-implemented method for automatically identifying a pulmonary embolism comprising: acquiring input data including a digital or digitized medical image, the image comprising: a vessel; and a candidate in the vessel; automatically extracting a boundary of the candidate; automatically extracting a segment of the vessel containing the candidate, wherein extracting the segment of the vessel comprises seeding the segment extraction using the boundary, and growing the boundary; automatically determining a plurality of features of the extracted segment of the vessel containing the candidate; automatically identifying the candidate as a pulmonary embolism based upon the plurality of features of the extracted segment of the vessel including comparing the plurality of features to a known set of pulmonary embolism features and verifying the pulmonary embolism based on the comparison; and automatically outputting data identifying the candidate as a pulmonary embolism and the plurality of features, wherein the data and the plurality of features are stored as computer-readable code.