Surgery – Diagnostic testing – Detecting nuclear – electromagnetic – or ultrasonic radiation
Patent
1995-09-22
1998-11-24
Casler, Brian L.
Surgery
Diagnostic testing
Detecting nuclear, electromagnetic, or ultrasonic radiation
128915, 378 37, 378 63, A61B 505
Patent
active
058400222
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a method and apparatus for conducting an examination of a subject, such as a mammography apparatus and method, wherein an image is obtained by introducing ultrasound into the subject and recording the resulting ultrasound echo signals.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Ultrasound imaging is increasingly utilized as screening examinations of body portions in cancer prevention.
The regular precautionary examination of the female mammary gland for early detection of breast cancer is extremely desirable since this illness, which represents the most common type of cancer in women in industrialized countries, has a significant tendency to spread and an early detection of the sickness usually means a cure. X-ray mammography is thereby an established method and is implemented in most instances by displaying the breast in two planes oriented perpendicularly to one another.
Ultrasound examinations represent a non-hazardous mammographic examination method and even extremely dense gland tissue (mastopathy) does not represent a problem since the tumors in dense gland tissue are visible in a sonographic display. X-ray mammography, by contrast, has no diagnostic value given patients with a mastopathy or with endoprotheses in the breast region since the tumors can then not be displayed or can only be poorly displayed.
An ultrasound tomograph disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 4,509,368 operates according in the manner described above. Therein, signals that are acquired reflection and transmission in the examination subject are superimposed on one another. The spatial directions of the reflected and transmitted signals thereby reside perpendicular to one another. Although this arrangement enables a gain in information compared to known solutions, systems operating according to this method have been employed in practice in significant numbers. This is because the apparatus is relatively complicated in structure and a number of acoustic transmitters and acoustic receivers are required, as a result of which the apparatus is expensive and is also not simple in terms of manipulation.
Further, German OS 40 37 387 discloses a method wherein the echo values obtained for coinciding spatial points from radiation directions opposite one another are superimposed, so that signal parts ultimately remain only for those spatial points that deviate from one another dependent on the radiation direction. As a result, information with respect to the shape and the surface structure of a recognized inhomogeneity can be derived better, since acoustic occlusions and the like are eliminated. It is still a disadvantage of this method, however, that the part of the body to be examined must be examined from two opposite spatial directions, so that the acoustic applicator head must either be shifted in position or, two acoustic heads are necessary.
PCT Application WO 88/08272 discloses a method and an apparatus for examining the female breast by means of serial examinations for cancer detection. The apparatus has an infrared radiation source with which the tissue to be examined is illuminated. A video camera receives that part of the infrared radiation that has passed through the tissue. In addition, an ultrasound transducer arrangement is provided for examining a tissue region. The overall examination is thus a two-stage examination procedure. Suspicious regions are identified by the aforementioned diaphanography procedure a designational examination with the ultrasound Doppler method subsequently ensues.
In a method disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 4,651,744, it is also the goal to differentiate lesions previously detected by diaphanography with ultrasound because an ultrasound examination of the entire examination region is described therein as being too involved in order to be employed in series examinations.
European Application 0 168 559 is directed to the locating of calculi that are to be disintegrated with a lithotriptor using ultrasound shock waves. Movement of the c
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Casler Brian L.
Siemens Aktiengesellschaft
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