1. A method of segmenting coronary vessels in digitized cardiac images comprising the steps of: providing a digitized cardiac image comprising a plurality of intensities corresponding to a domain of points on an N-dimensional grid; providing a seed point in said digitized image; selecting a volume-of-interest about said seed point; performing a local segmentation in said volume-of-interest, including initializing a connected component with said seed point and a threshold intensity value to the intensity of the seed point, adding a point to said connected component if said point is adjacent to said connected component and if the intensity of said point is greater than or equal to the threshold value, lowering said threshold intensity value, and computing an attribute value of said connected component, wherein if a discontinuity in said attribute value is detected, said local segmentation is terminated, wherein a local segmentation mask of a vessel is obtained and smoothing points added to said connected component with a bilateral filter.