An imaging system for automated segmentation and visualization of medical images (100) includes an image processing module (107) for automatically processing image data using a set of directives (109) to identify a target object in the image data and process the image data according to a specified protocol, a rendering module (105) for automatically generating one or more images of the target object based on one or more of the directives (109) and a digital archive (110) for storing the one or more generated images. The image data may be DICOM-formatted image data (103), wherein the imaging processing module (107) extracts and processes meta-data in DICOM fields of the image data to identify the target object. The image processing module (107) directs a segmentation module (108) to segment the target object using processing parameters specified by one or more of the directives (109).