Network-based ultrasound imaging system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11709265-B2
Application number	US-202117330301-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	May 25, 2021
Priority date	Aug 18, 2014
Publication date	Jul 25, 2023
Grant date	Jul 25, 2023

Abstract

Systems and methods for network-based ultrasound imaging are provided, which can include a number of features. In some embodiments, an ultrasound imaging system images an object with three-dimensional unfocused pings and obtains digital sample sets from a plurality of receiver elements. A sub-set of the digital sample sets can be electronically transferred to a remote server, where the sub-set can be beamformed to produce a series of two-dimensional image frames. A video stream made up of the series of two-dimensional images frames can then be transferred from the remote server to a display device.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method of ultrasound imaging comprising the steps of:
transmitting an unfocused three-dimensional ping into an object from a transmitter element of a transducer array in a probe of a data capture device;
receiving echoes of the unfocused three-dimensional ping from one or more reflectors with a plurality of receiver elements of the transducer array;
converting analog signals from each of the plurality of receiver elements into a full dataset of digital sample sets, wherein the full dataset comprises digital sample sets from all the receiver elements;
communicating the full dataset to a network-based image generation system;
in the network-based image generation system,
combining digital sample sets from a plurality of the receiver elements to represent a three-dimensional location of each reflector as a voxel in a 3D volume;
selecting a first voxel within the 3D volume;
identifying closest digital sample sets within the full dataset to the selected first voxel for each receiver element;
summing the closest digital sample sets to produce a final representation of the selected first voxel.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising repeating the selecting, identifying, and summing steps for a plurality of selected voxels.

3. The method of claim 1 where the final representation of the selected first voxel is made up of combined data from a plurality of receiver elements.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising transmitting a second unfocused three-dimensional ping into an object from a second transmitter element, and repeating the receiving, converting, communicating, combining, selecting, identifying, and summing steps or the second unfocused three-dimensional ping.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising coherently combining the closest digital sample sets when the receiver elements fall within the same coherence window.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising incoherently combining the closest digital sample sets when the receiver elements fall outside of the same coherence window.

7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising coherently or incoherently combining the voxels of the 3D volume to form a 3D image.

8. The method of claim 7 , further comprising extracting a 2D slide of pixels from the 3D volume to form a two-dimensional image.

9. The method of claim 8 , further comprising selecting a desired two-dimensional image with a user interface.

Assignees

• Maui Imaging Inc

Inventors

• Call Josef R
• Davis Henry A
• Smith David M
• Specht David J
• Le Viet Nam
• Mchardy Lang J
• Digiovanni Ii Joseph James
• Osborn Nathan W
• Ritzi Bruce R

Classifications

• G01S15/8929 Primary

  using a three-dimensional transducer configuration · CPC title

• A61B8/14

  Echo-tomography · CPC title

• A61B8/483

  involving the acquisition of a 3D volume of data · CPC title

• A61B8/523

  for generating planar views from image data in a user selectable plane not corresponding to the acquisition plane · CPC title

• A61B8/5207

  involving processing of raw data to produce diagnostic data, e.g. for generating an image · CPC title