Surgery – Diagnostic testing – Detecting nuclear – electromagnetic – or ultrasonic radiation
Reexamination Certificate
1998-09-30
2001-09-04
Lateef, Marvin M. (Department: 3737)
Surgery
Diagnostic testing
Detecting nuclear, electromagnetic, or ultrasonic radiation
C128S916000, C600S454000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06283918
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a three-dimensional display of medical images, and more particularly to a medical image diagnostic apparatus which provides images representing tissues forming internal organs in a living organism and those representing structures, such as blood vessels, in an easy-to-understand form suitable for diagnosis or medical treatment and to a medical image diagnostic apparatus which obtains quantitative parameters for a living organism on the basis of three-dimensional medical images.
In various diagnoses, it is important to grasp the vascular architecture in a living organism three-dimensionally. For instance, to grasp the nutritive blood vessels entering the hepatophyma in the lever is important in distinguishing between a malignant tumor and a benign tumor or judging the effect of treatment. When the renal function is evaluated, the state of the return of bloodstream in the kidney serves as an index.
Only three-dimensional information on the vascular architecture is often not enough to make an appropriate diagnosis. For instance, even when blood vessels are sensed and visualized near the hepatophyma and a three-dimensional image of the blood vessels is obtained, it is necessary to know whether the blood vessels have gone into the tumor to determine whether the blood vessels in the tumor are nutritive ones. When the image of the tumor is obtained only from the image of the blood vessels, the position of the tumor cannot be located, preventing diagnosis. Furthermore, it is not clear whether the bloodstream has flown back close to the surface of the kidney, unless it is known where the parenchyma or surface of the kidney is. That is, sufficient diagnosis cannot be made unless an image of parenchymatous internal organs whose positional relationship with an image of the bloodstream or the blood vessels is kept unchanged is obtained and displayed simultaneously.
In recent years, it has been getting important to quantitatively represent the amount of bloodstream and the abundance of blood vessels. The prior art, however, has encountered the problem of being unable to determine not only the calculation range of quantitative parameters from only an image of blood vessels but also quantitative parameters with sufficient reliability. It also has encountered the problem of having difficulty in determining sufficiently quantitative parameters.
BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is, accordingly, an object of the present invention to overcome the problems by providing a medical image diagnostic apparatus which displays an image of a network structure, such as blood vessels, and an image of tissue with gradation, such as parenchymatous internal organs, in such a manner that their positional relationship can be observed accurately.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a medical image diagnostic apparatus capable of obtaining quantitative parameters accurately from three-dimensional information on an image of tissue and on an image of a structure, such as blood vessels.
The foregoing objects are accomplished by providing the following medical image diagnostic apparatus.
A medical image diagnostic apparatus acquires three-dimensional information from a structure, such as a blood vessel, and three-dimensional information from a tissue, such as a parenchymatous internal organ, in different imaging modes in such a manner that the positional relationship between the two types of three-dimensional information is kept unchanged.
Furthermore, the apparatus is characterized by:
(1) displaying a cross-sectional image of a tissue image and a three-dimensional image of a structure on the same screen in such a manner that the coordinates of the cross-sectional image correspond to those of the three-dimensional image and changing the display area of the three-dimensional image in front of or behind the cross-sectional image.
(2) specifying a region from which parameters are to be obtained for the three-dimensional data on the tissue image in obtaining quantitative parameters for the structure and determining the quantitative parameters from the three-dimensional information on the structure image corresponding to the specified region.
(3) using both information on the tissue image and information on the structure image not only to set the region but also calculate the quantitative parameters.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out hereinafter.
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Hashimoto Shin'ichi
Iinuma Kazuhiro
Kanda Ryoichi
Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba
Lateef Marvin M.
Oblon & Spivak, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt P.C.
Shaw Shawna J
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