JPH10314166A - Ultrasound diagnostic equipment - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] An object of the present invention is to provide an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus capable of early detecting that a transfer image is erroneous. The present invention reconstructs an ultrasonic image based on an echo signal obtained by scanning the inside of a subject with ultrasonic waves, displays the image in real time, and transfers the ultrasonic image signal to the outside. In an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus capable of performing this operation, while transmitting an ultrasonic image signal from the image transfer circuit 9, the transferred ultrasonic image can be reduced by the transfer image display circuit 7 and displayed on the monitor 8. It is characterized in that it is configured to be possible.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus which scans the inside of a subject with ultrasonic waves and reconstructs and displays an ultrasonic image based on the echo signals obtained.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art There are various medical applications of ultrasonic waves, and the mainstream is an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus for tomographic images of soft tissues of a living body using an ultrasonic pulse reflection method. This ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus is a non-invasive examination method and displays a tomographic image of a tissue. It has unique features such as display capability, small and inexpensive device, high safety without exposure to X-rays, and the ability to perform blood flow imaging by the ultrasonic Doppler method.

[0003] Therefore, it is widely used in the heart, abdomen, mammary gland, urology, obstetrics and gynecology, and the like. In particular, with the simple operation of simply assigning the ultrasound probe from the body surface, the state of the heart beat and the movement of the fetus can be obtained in real time display,
In addition, the safety is high, so that the inspection can be repeated, and the inspection while moving to the bedside can be easily performed.

[0004] Ultrasonic diagnostics have various advantages as described above. However, with the recent development of communication technology, there is a strong tendency to provide an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus with a communication function. Ultrasound images are transferred to an external device such as a workstation via a network, where they can be used for automatic diagnosis, intensively interpreted by a specific doctor, or stored in a centralized manner for various uses. It is becoming.

[0005] In this transfer function, auxiliary information such as a patient name and a patient ID of an ultrasonic image being transferred is displayed in a list, so that an operator can confirm the transfer image, the current status of transfer, and the like.

However, the operator at the transfer source cannot be convinced only by the accompanying information, and the possibility that an erroneous ultrasonic image is transferred cannot be denied. Even if an erroneous image is transferred, it is often difficult for the transfer destination workstation to determine whether the transferred image is erroneous or correct. There was a risk of developing medical mistakes that could not be made. If it is found after the transfer that the transfer image is incorrect at the transfer destination, the transfer may be performed again. In this case, the transfer must be performed again from the beginning, which wastes time and cost.

[0007]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the present invention to provide an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus capable of detecting an error in a transferred image at an early stage.

[0008]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION According to the present invention, an ultrasonic image is reconstructed based on an echo signal obtained by scanning the inside of a subject with ultrasonic waves and displayed in real time. In an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus capable of transmitting a signal to the outside, it is configured that, during the transmission of the ultrasonic image signal, the transmitted ultrasonic image can be reduced and displayed. Features.

(Operation) According to the present invention, during transmission of an ultrasonic image, the transmitted ultrasonic image is displayed in a reduced size. Can be found early before the transfer is completed.

[0010]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus according to the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 shows a configuration of an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus according to the present embodiment. This ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus has a plurality of micro piezoelectric elements at its tip to mediate between a side that handles electric signals and a subject side that applies amplitude modulation or frequency modulation to ultrasonic waves to give internal information. Are provided with the ultrasonic probe 1 arranged therein.
The form of the probe 1 is arbitrarily selected from among sectors, linear, convex and the like.

The ultrasonic probe 1 is connected to a transmitting / receiving circuit 2 having a transmitting circuit, a receiving circuit, and an image reconstructing circuit. The transmission circuit generally has a clock generator, a rate pulse generator, a transmission delay circuit, and a pulser. According to the clock oscillated from the clock generator, the rate pulse generator outputs a rate pulse for determining the transmission rate of ultrasonic waves (the number of transmissions per second). The rate pulse is given to the pulser as a trigger pulse after receiving an appropriate delay necessary for determining the directivity of the ultrasonic wave by the transmission delay circuit. A high-frequency signal pulse is applied to the piezoelectric element of the probe 1 individually or in units of neighboring groups from the pulser in synchronization with the trigger pulse. The piezoelectric element of the probe 1 vibrates in response to the signal pulse. Thereby, an ultrasonic wave is generated and transmitted to the subject.

The ultrasonic wave propagates in the living body, and is reflected one after another on a discontinuous surface of acoustic impedance in the middle of the ultrasonic wave.
The reflection process includes a behavior close to amplitude modulation depending on the difference in acoustic impedance at the discontinuous surface and a behavior close to frequency modulation in which the frequency shifts due to the Doppler effect.

The echo returns to the probe 1 and vibrates the piezoelectric element. As a result, a weak electric signal is generated from the piezoelectric element. This electric signal is taken into the receiving circuit. The receiving circuit generally has a preamplifier, a receiving delay circuit, and an adder. The electric signal from the probe 1 is first amplified by a preamplifier, subjected to an appropriate delay, for example, opposite to that at the time of transmission by a reception delay circuit, and then added by an adder. Thus, one echo signal having reception directivity is obtained.

This echo signal is supplied to an image reconstruction circuit. Based on the echo signal, the image reconstruction circuit performs a B mode representing a tissue slice, an M mode representing a tissue change on a line over time, a continuous wave Doppler mode representing a blood flow state on an arbitrary line in detail, Such as a pulse wave Doppler mode that represents the blood flow state in detail at one point at an arbitrary depth, a color flow mapping mode that spatially represents the state of the blood flow (sometimes called a blood flow image mode or a color Doppler mode), etc. Reconstruct ultrasound images. Of course, it may be configured such that only one mode can be reconfigured, or an operator can freely select an arbitrary mode from several modes.

Since the reconstruction processing and the configuration of each of these modes are well known, only two representative modes, the B mode and the color flow mapping mode, will be briefly described.

First, the B-mode processing unit generally has a detection circuit, a logarithmic amplifier, and an analog-to-digital converter. As described above, the echo signal subjected to the amplitude modulation in the living body is demodulated, and the envelope is detected by the detection circuit. This envelope signal is logarithmically amplified by a logarithmic amplifier and further converted to a digital signal by an analog-to-digital converter.

Next, the color flow mapping processing unit includes a mixer, a low-pass filter, an analog-to-digital converter, an MTI filter, an autocorrelator, and an operation unit. The mixer and the low-pass filter constitute a quadrature phase detection circuit. The reference signal having the same center frequency as the transmission frequency and the reference signal shifted by 90 ° from the reference signal are individually multiplied with the echo signal, and obtained by this multiplication. By removing the high frequency component from each of the obtained signals, the shift frequency component is extracted and output as a Doppler signal. The Doppler signal includes a high-frequency component mainly subjected to frequency modulation by reflection from a fast moving body such as blood cells, and a low-frequency component mainly subjected to frequency modulation by reflection from a slow moving body such as a heart wall. And are included.

The Doppler signal is sampled by an analog-to-digital converter according to a predetermined sampling frequency corresponding to, for example, 0.5 mm intervals for one scanning line, converted into a digital signal, and sent to an MTI filter. The MTI filter functions as a high-pass filter, passes only high-frequency components (blood flow components) that are frequency-modulated mainly by reflection from a fast moving body such as blood cells, and mainly passes through a slow moving body such as a heart wall. A low frequency component (clutter component) that has been frequency-modulated by reflection is removed. Then, the Doppler signal including only the blood flow component is frequency-analyzed by an autocorrelator to determine a shift frequency due to blood cells. Based on the shift frequency, the calculation unit calculates a blood flow velocity (average velocity), its variance, and power (amplitude of Doppler signal) mainly reflecting the blood flow for each sample point.

The ultrasonic image signal reconstructed by the transmission / reception circuit 2 is subjected to appropriate processing such as zooming and interpolation by a digital scan converter (DSC) circuit 3 and further to a TV.
It is converted to a scanning method and output as a serial signal. This ultrasonic signal is sent to the monitor 8 via the display signal switch 4.
Is displayed in real time in parallel with the scanning operation. In addition, the ultrasonic image displayed in real time,
It is referred to as "live image".

Also, of the many ultrasonic image signals reconfigured by the transmission / reception circuit 2 and converted to the TV scanning system by the digital scan converter circuit 3, the control console 1
Signals of a plurality of ultrasonic images designated by the operator via the control console 0 are selectively sent to the acquired image recording memory 6 via the image acquisition circuit 5 under the control of the control console 10 and recorded there.

Among the plurality of ultrasonic image signals recorded in the acquired image recording memory 6, all or some ultrasonic image signals designated by the operator via the control console 10 are acquired under the control of the control console 10. The image data is read out from the image recording memory 6 in order in synchronization with a predetermined transfer speed, and
Is transferred to an external device such as a workstation (not shown) via a LAN (local area network).

The signal of the ultrasonic image (transfer image) read from the collected image recording memory 6 for transfer is
The image is also sent to the transfer image display circuit 7, where the image is reduced to a predetermined reduction ratio by, for example, thinning processing, and displayed on the monitor 8 via the display signal switch 4 as a guide image of the ultrasonic image being transferred. In this way, the currently transmitted ultrasound image is displayed as a reduced image, so that the transfer source operator can accurately transfer not only character information such as supplementary information of the image but also the actual transfer image with the image information as in the related art. You can check whether the image is incorrect.

If an erroneous transmission is confirmed in the middle of the transfer, the operator can input a command to interrupt the transfer from the control console 10. The signal reading from the recording memory 6 is interrupted, and the signal output from the image transfer circuit 9 is stopped.

Further, since the currently transmitted ultrasonic image is displayed in a reduced size, there is little interference with conventional character information displayed for confirming whether or not the transmitted image is erroneous. Even when the live image is transferred in the background while the live image is displayed while continuing, there is an advantage that the live image is less likely to interfere.

FIG. 2 shows an example of a display screen in the case where scanning is interrupted or stopped and transfer is performed in the non-background. During this transfer period, the control console 1 transmits only the display signal from the transfer image display circuit 7 in a fixed manner and displays it.
According to the control of 0, the display signal switch 4 is set to the B terminal.

The display signal of one screen generated by the transfer image display circuit 7 includes, in addition to the reduced image of the ultrasonic image being transferred,
The information on the patient such as the patient name and the patient ID picked up from the supplementary information of the ultrasonic image being transferred and the list in which the collection dates and times of the plurality of ultrasonic images to be transferred are arranged in the transfer order are represented by symbols or characters. Written as a column.

Further, an identifier is added to the list so that the operator can identify the currently transferred ultrasonic image in the list from the transferred or untransferred one. As the identifier, the acquisition date of the ultrasonic image currently being transferred is displayed in reverse black and white, displayed in a different color, and an identification marker such as a star is attached. The specific method is arbitrary. .

As described above, the operator can confirm the transfer image from both the image information and the character information.
Compared to the conventional case of only character information, the determination of erroneous transmission is more accurate, and erroneous transmission can be found earlier at the transfer source. Furthermore, the transfer status by the identifier, that is, the order of the image currently being transferred among a plurality of ultrasound images to be transferred,
Information such as the remaining number can also be grasped. Also, as described above, the currently transferred ultrasonic image is displayed in a reduced size,
There is also an advantage that interference with conventional character information displayed for confirming whether or not the transfer image is incorrect can be reduced.

FIG. 3 shows an example of a display screen in the case where transfer is performed in the background while scanning is continued and a live image is displayed. During this transfer period, the display signal switch 4 dynamically switches between the A terminal and the B terminal in accordance with the control of the control console 10 in synchronization with the reading of the live image from the digital scan converter circuit 3 in the TV scanning method. By this switching, a small screen representing the transfer image and transfer status from the transfer image display circuit 7 is formed as a window on a part of the screen of the live image, specifically, around the deepest end of the live image which has little effect on diagnosis. It will be replaced and displayed.

This minute transfer screen incorporates, as a symbol string, the number of ultrasonic images to be transferred and the order of the images currently being transferred, in addition to the reduced image related to the ultrasonic image being transferred. As a result, among the plurality of ultrasound images to be transferred, the order of the image currently being transferred is
Information such as the remaining number can also be grasped. In addition, as described above, since the currently transmitted ultrasonic image is displayed in a reduced size, even when the scan is continued and the live image is displayed in the background while being transmitted, the ultrasonic image may interfere with the live image. There is also an advantage that it can be reduced.

It is needless to say that the present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiment, but can be implemented with various modifications.

[0032]

According to the present invention, during transmission of an ultrasonic image, the transmitted ultrasonic image is displayed in a reduced size, so that the operator sees the reduced image and the transmitted image is incorrect. Can be found early before the transfer is completed.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an example of a display screen displayed on the monitor of FIG. 1 during transmission of an ultrasonic image signal in a normal mode.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an example of a display screen displayed on the monitor of FIG. 1 during transmission of an ultrasonic image signal in a background mode.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Ultrasonic probe, 2 ... Transmission / reception circuit, 3 ... Digital scan converter circuit, 4 ... Display signal switcher, 5 ... Image acquisition circuit, 6 ... Acquisition image recording memory, 7 ... Transfer image display circuit, 8 ... Monitor, 9 ... Image transfer circuit, 10 ... Control console.

Claims (8)

[Claims] An ultrasonic image is reconstructed on the basis of an echo signal obtained by scanning the inside of an object with an ultrasonic wave and displayed in real time, and the ultrasonic image signal is transferred to the outside. An ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus, which is configured to be capable of displaying the transmitted ultrasonic image in a reduced size while transmitting the ultrasonic image signal. 2. The ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the transfer is interrupted. 3. The ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus according to claim 1, wherein a list of auxiliary information relating to a plurality of ultrasonic images to be transferred is displayed on the same screen as the reduced image of the ultrasonic image being transferred. 4. The ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the supplementary information includes an image collection date and time. 5. The ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus according to claim 3, wherein an identifier for identifying an ultrasonic image being transferred is added to the list of the supplementary information. 6. The ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus according to claim 3, wherein information related to the patient of the ultrasonic image being transferred is displayed on the same screen as the reduced image of the ultrasonic image being transferred. 7. The ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the ultrasonic image being transferred is reduced and displayed on the same screen as the ultrasonic image displayed in real time. 8. The method according to claim 1, wherein the number of ultrasonic images to be transferred and the order of the ultrasonic images currently being transferred are displayed on the same screen as the ultrasonic image displayed in real time. Item 8. An ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus according to Item 7.