Surgery – Diagnostic testing – Detecting nuclear – electromagnetic – or ultrasonic radiation
Reexamination Certificate
2001-09-18
2004-01-27
Manuel, George (Department: 3737)
Surgery
Diagnostic testing
Detecting nuclear, electromagnetic, or ultrasonic radiation
C382S100000, C382S115000, C382S117000, C382S124000, C382S128000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06684093
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a medical diagnosis apparatus, particularly large apparatuses operated in a centralized manner, such as MR scanners, CT tomographs or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Large medical apparatuses, due to their high costs, are usually operated by specialists to whom patients are referred from other doctors or, in clinics, from other departments. This situation can produce a problem of reliably assigning the patient to his data which are obtained during the examination or therapy in the large medical apparatus, since experience shows the repeated occurrence of an incorrect name preventing the correct assignment of the data to the respective patient. A simple typographical error when entering the patient's data is often all that is necessary to bring about such an incorrect assignment.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The invention is therefore based on the object of configuring a medical diagnosis apparatus of the type mentioned above in such a way that these types of mistakes and incorrect assignment of the diagnosis data to the respective patient are prevented from the outset.
In order to achieve this object, the invention provides for a medical diagnosis apparatus to be characterized according to the invention by a patient acquisition device assigned to it. This patient acquisition device is used for acquiring individual distinctive identification features of the patient which are automatically stored with the apparatus data obtained.
In this case, in a refinement of the invention, reliable assignment of the apparatus data obtained to the respective patient, which (even when other details, for example the patient's name, are entered erroneously) enables exact checking and correction at any time with the aid of the patient acquisition device according to the invention. The patient, and the respective information, is additionally protected particularly against operating errors, when, in a refinement of the invention, the medical diagnosis apparatus is disabled if the patient acquisition device is not actuated, and is enabled for the examination only by the actuation of the patient acquisition device. In this case, by way of example, fingertip sensors or else iris measuring devices are suitable as the patient acquisition device, since a fingerprint and also an iris measurement capture very reliable individual identifying characteristics of a patient, so that mistakes can be completely precluded.
In an especially advantageous manner, a camera, particularly a digital camera, may be provided as the patient acquisition device. In the case of such a digital camera, a safeguard device with plausibility comparison structures may additionally be connected downstream of this camera in order to be able to automatically clarify whether the photograph was successful.
Thus, by way of example, a comparison with typical facial contours, including the position of the two eyes, a nose and the mouth, can be used as a comparison criterion in order to be able to ascertain automatically, and without an operator first having to inspect the photograph, whether the patient's head was actually captured, or whether the camera was incorrectly oriented and simply photographed only the table or the floor. More exact checks are not even necessary since the invention deals only with correcting operating errors and inadvertent erroneous entries, and not with deliberate incorrect entries.
A real world application does not involve the situation where somebody lays a different person on the patient table during the process of acquisition with the digital camera and causes him to be photographed as the actual patient or manipulates him in some other way with the aid of a device used for deceptive intent. Thus, a plausibility assessment of the image from the digital camera in the manner described above is entirely sufficient for automatically protecting the actual recording. With the creation of the photograph or the actuation of the respective other patient acquisition device, the actual medical diagnosis apparatus is enabled. This ensures that firstly the patient acquisition data are stored on the respective data carrier on which the apparatus data (e.g., the image sets of a magnetic resonance scanner) are then stored.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4121574 (1978-10-01), Lester
patent: 4156230 (1979-05-01), Riganati et al.
patent: 5071168 (1991-12-01), Shamos
patent: 5325294 (1994-06-01), Keene
patent: 5697376 (1997-12-01), Nomura et al.
patent: 5876926 (1999-03-01), Beecham
patent: 6081607 (2000-06-01), Mori et al.
patent: 6173068 (2001-01-01), Prokoski
patent: 6396937 (2002-05-01), Chen et al.
patent: 6406426 (2002-06-01), Reuss et al.
patent: 6542627 (2003-04-01), Kawata
patent: 39 43 097 (1991-07-01), None
patent: 40 09 051 (1992-01-01), None
Williams, J.D., Use of Biometrics and Biomedical Imaging in Support of Battlefield Diagnosis, Fusion'98—First International Conference on Multisource-Multisensor Information Fusion, Las Vegas, Jul. 6-9, 1998.*
Baldwin, F.D., Believing in Biometrics: Biometric technologies not only exist—they work and are now affordable. Health Informatics, Aug. 2000, p. 37-46.*
MedPixTM Teaching File and Image Data Base, Case Inventory No. 593/1112 (May 15, 2000) Retrieved Nov. 22, 2002: URL <http://rad.usuhs.mil/synapse/radpix.html?mode=quiz&imid=593&quiz=yes&th=1&table=card&showall=#pic>.*
Smith, JP, “Authentication of digital medical images with digital signature technology” Radiology, vol. 194, 771-774, 1995.*
Anand, D and Niranjan, UC, Watermarking medical images with patient information Proced 20th Annual International Conference IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, vol. 20, No. 2, 1998.*
Anand et al. Watermarking Medical Images with Patient Information. Proc. 20th Ann. Int. Conf. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, vol. 20, No. 2, 1998.
Manuel George
Pass Barry
Schiff & Hardin & Waite
Siemens Aktiengesellschaft
LandOfFree
Medical diagnosis apparatus with patient recognition does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Medical diagnosis apparatus with patient recognition, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Medical diagnosis apparatus with patient recognition will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-3198831