Surgery – Diagnostic testing – Detecting nuclear – electromagnetic – or ultrasonic radiation
Reexamination Certificate
2002-08-16
2004-02-24
Imam, Ali M. (Department: 3737)
Surgery
Diagnostic testing
Detecting nuclear, electromagnetic, or ultrasonic radiation
Reexamination Certificate
active
06695779
ABSTRACT:
The present invention relates to the field of ultrasound imaging and, more particularly, to augmented reality visualization of ultrasound images and to the freezing of ultrasound images both in time and in space.
Ultrasound scanners capture live 2D images from within objects or patients. Typically, scanners have a standard option to freeze an image in time and display the still image on the screen for evaluation, such as for example, for measuring spatial dimensions in the image.
Augmented Reality visualization of ultrasound images means that the ultrasound images are displayed as an overlay onto a view of the real object that is being scanned. The overlay is performed in a way such that the ultrasound images appear in the actual scan plane. Structures seen in the ultrasound image are registered to the corresponding real structures and appear in the actual spatial location of these physical structures. Preferably, the AR visualization is stereoscopic to give the user 3D perception.
FIG. 1
show a schematic block diagram of an augmented reality system as may be utilized in conjunction with features of the invention. A tracker camera
10
is coupled by way of and A/D (analog to digital) converter
12
to a programmable digital computer
14
. Two scene cameras
16
are coupled to computer
14
. An ultrasound scanner
16
, having a transducer
18
, is coupled by way of an A/D converter
20
to computer
14
. A head-mounted display (HMD) control unit
22
is coupled for signal interchange with computer
14
and to an HMD display
24
.
Augmented Reality visualization of ultrasound images has been proposed in the literature; see for exampled, M. Bajura, H. Fuchs, and R. Ohbuchi. “Merging Virtual Objects with the Real World: Seeing Ultrasound Imagery within the Patient.” Proceedings of SIGGRAPH '92 (Chicago, Il., Jul. 26-31, 1992). In Computer Graphics 26, #2 (July 1992): 20
Ultrasound scanners are commonly utilized to capture live 2D images from within objects or patients. Scanners typically have a standard option to freeze an image in time and display the still image on the screen for evaluation, e.g. for measuring spatial dimensions in the image.
Helpful background material on augmented reality and related topics can be found in Proceedings of the IEEE and ACM International Symposium on Augmented Reality 2000, dated Oct. 5-6, 2000; Munich, Germany; IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, Calif., U.S.A. In the above-cited Proceedings, an article of particular interest entitled AUGMENTED WORKSPACE: DESIGNING AN AR TESTBED is published on pages 47-53, and is authored by Frank Sauer, an inventor in the present application, et alii.
See also the review article by R. T. Azuma: “A Survey of Augmented Reality”, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtula Environments, 6(4), 355-386, (1997).
It has also been proposed to build up 3D volume information from a set of ultrasound images. In conjunction with augmented reality visualization, it has been proposed and demonstrated not to only show the current ultrasound image in the augmented view, but to let each ultrasound image stay (at its correct location) for a while, letting it fade away over a defined time period. As long as the ultrasound transducer is being moved, there would always be a set of different ultrasound images that are being displayed simultaneously. This method is helpful to provide the user with some kind of 3D perception of the scanned volume, but it requires the user to keep moving the transducer so as not to lose the image of the structures of interest.
It is herein recognized that, at least in principle, one might keep all the ultrasound images, building up a permanent 3D ultrasound image. However, this is recognized to be computationally very demanding and, furthermore, it is likely to be confusing to the user, with the display of too many structures.
In accordance with an aspect of the present invention, selected ultrasound images are made stay in the augmented image on a trigger signal, and are made disappear on a trigger signal.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5795297 (1998-08-01), Daigle
patent: 6503195 (2003-01-01), Keller et al.
Bascle Benedicte
Khamene Ali
Sauer Frank
Imam Ali M.
Siemens Corporate Research Inc.
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