Methods and systems and computer program products for automatically segmenting the volume of interest from intensity images are provided. The method for segmenting a volume of interest in an intensity image receives the intensity image and the scanner acquisition parameters used to acquire the intensity image. The method then scales the contrast of the intensity image based, at least in part, on the scanner acquisition parameters. The method segments the intensity image based, at least in part, on image data of the intensity image and the scanner acquisition parameters, to obtain the volume of interest.