1. A method of automatically detecting an aorta without requiring a user seed input, the method comprising: receiving image data corresponding to a series of axial image slices, wherein the series of image slices is used to reconstruct a three-dimensional (3D) image; searching axial image slices from a starting image slice and calculating a confidence score for a candidate cross-section image of the ascending aorta in an image slice; identifying a seed image slice including an ascending aorta seed disk, the identifying performed using the confidence score; and growing a segmentation of the ascending aorta by stacking ascending aorta image disks located in consecutive image slices to the ascending aorta seed disk.