1. A method of generating a gray value model and a geometric model associated with an anatomic entity in a digital medical image, the method comprising sampling a manually segmented outline of said anatomic entity at a number of landmark points; sampling a number of points in a neighborhood of each of said landmark points; for each landmark point arranging sampled points in a neighborhood around a landmark point in a profile; computing at least one feature image; computing a mean profile for each landmark point and for each feature image; computing a covariance matrix of the profiles for each landmark point and each feature image; constructing said gray value model by identifying said mean profile and said covariance matrix of the profiles as the gray value model of said anatomic entity; computing connection vectors or connection vector differences between successive landmark points; computing a mean connection vector or mean connection vector difference for successive pairs of landmark points; computing a covariance matrix of connection vectors or connection vector differences; and constructing a geometric model of said anatomic entity by identifying said mean connection vector and said covariance matrix of connection vectors or connection vector differences as said geometric model of said anatomic entity.