Electricity: measuring and testing – Particle precession resonance – Spectrometer components
Reexamination Certificate
2002-05-28
2004-04-13
Arana, Louis (Department: 2859)
Electricity: measuring and testing
Particle precession resonance
Spectrometer components
C324S318000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06720770
ABSTRACT:
This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. §§ 119 and/or 365 to IT SV2001A00017 filed in Italy on May 28, 2001; the entire content of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance imaging apparatus.
2. Discussion of Related Art
In document U.S. Pat. No. 6,339,717 B1 a medical examination system, particularly a magnetic resonance imaging apparatus is disclosed showing the above described architecture. The apparatus has a host computer unit, a control computer unit and an image computer unit. The three computer units are integrated in a commercially obtainable personal computer that contains at least two of the said computers, preferably all three of the said computers. The integrated hardware architecture is further operated also by a commercially available operating system such as Windows® or other kinds of operating systems. Part of the hardware and specifically, the units for driving the apparatuses specific exciting and receiving units as well as the analog to digital and digital to analog converters for transforming the digital control signals in analog signals for controlling the driving units and for transforming the analog received data in digital data, are housed within the frame of the nuclear magnetic resonance apparatuses, while the conventional personal computer hardware is housed in a separated case or console. Thus U.S. Pat. No. 6,339,717 B1 teaches to separate the said personal computer hardware from the nuclear magnetic resonance excitation and receipt unit.
Although the use of commercial hardware in the form of personal computer already contributes to lower costs of the apparatuses, a considerable amount of hardware is reproduced in each machine. The computational power of each such personal computer hardware is not completely exploited by carrying out the control and processing functions of only one machine.
Furthermore, a particular kind of medical examining apparatuses, particularly of magnetic resonance imaging apparatuses, is getting more and more interesting for the user, due to its lower costs, to the reduced dimensions and to the more simple way to install it. Such apparatuses are the so called “Dedicated MRI” apparatuses which have magnetic structures which are relatively small and which are constructed for examination of only special anatomical districts of the entire body, such as the foot, the knee, the elbow, the head, the shoulder, the hand, etc.
Thus in a bigger medical cabinet or in a diagnostic department many of these specific apparatuses may be provided each one having its own hardware.
OBJECTS AND SUMMARY
It is important in this case to reduce so far as possible costs and volume of the apparatuses.
It is an object of the present invention to provide for a medical examining apparatus, particularly for a magnetic resonance imaging apparatus, which construction helps in reducing the overall dimensions of the apparatus or the need of installation space for the apparatus and in reducing costs.
Furthermore it is another object of the present invention to provide a medical examination apparatus, particularly a magnetic resonance imaging apparatus, having an hardware architecture which facilitates the configuration and upgrade of the apparatus by limiting as far as possible the amount of hardware which needs to be substituted for configuration and upgrade.
The invention achieves the above mentioned aims by means of a nuclear resonance imaging apparatus, in which at least one part of the personal computer hardware is formed by a client and a server computer communicating one with the other by means of a conventional network protocols.
Many different configurations of the client-server architecture are possible which has different levels of advantage.
In one possible configuration, the client computer is mainly formed by a motherboard comprising a local CPU and only a network interface such as a conventional network card or network controller and the local client computer, this means the client computer associated to the exciting and receiving units of the magnetic resonance imaging apparatuses, only manages the communication with the server computer in which one all the hardware units and software reside which are necessary for controlling the driving units of the exciting and receiving units located in the machine frame of the exciting and receiving units themselves, for processing the received data obtaining from them the image data, for displaying, filing, storing the said image data, and for receiving and processing the commands inputted by the machine operators and also for managing the network communication.
Since network protocols allow a wide sharing of peripherals directly connected with the client and or the server computer, some of the peripherals may be connected directly only to the client computer or to the hardware computer.
Other peripherals may be connected or interfaced directly with both computers depending on the level of hardware doubling requested by the operators for facilitating their job.
In any case, transferring most of the controlling and processing tasks to a server computer reduces the hardware needed for configuring the client computer which must in this case carry out local minor or limited tasks.
For example, the display monitor or input devices must be provided for the client computer and for the server computer. This hardware doubling might be also chosen for other peripherals such as mass storage devices and/or portable data devices writer or readers such as floppy disk drives, CD-rom or CD-writable or rewritable, DVD-ROM or DVD writable or rewritable drives or other kind of storage device readers and writers such as compact flash, PCMCIA memory stick readers and writers, or the like.
The client computer may have also a hard disk unit or other kind of memory unit for storing the communication protocols and control software and the operating system as well as the software for carrying out limited local tasks.
It is to be appreciated that the client computer in any case needs a reduced computational power, limited hard disk or memory for the local software and a reduced RAM as the server computer. Thus also if many of the peripherals are provided in the configuration of the client local computer as well as in the configuration of the server computer costs of the client computer will be considerably lower than the costs of the server computer.
It is also to be considered that in case of use of only one apparatus, the client computer might be very simply configured as the server computer so that no client computer will be necessary since more than one apparatuses are provided are provided.
In case of use of two or more apparatuses, the client server architecture however allows to reduce costs for hardware, and software because the second apparatus will need only to be equipped with the client computer, while it will be put in communication with the server computer of the first apparatus.
Thus a second, a third and further apparatuses may be added very simply to the network by simply providing the server computer with a switch or a hub having the requested number of ports which are needed.
Each one of the apparatuses connected to the server may be differently configured relating to their client computer and the different peripherals of the different client computer configurations may be or not shared by each or part of the apparatuses connected to the network.
Relating to the above mentioned possibility it is to be noticed that the above described client/server architecture may be in any case also used in any kind of medical examination device. So also examination devices of different kind such as ultrasound, radiographic or similar apparatuses may be connected to the network, thereby sparing resources also for this kind of apparatuses. In this case the server computer must be provided also with the controlling, processing and displaying programs for each different kind of apparatus connected to the network.
Biglieri Eugenio
Pugliese Osvaldo
Arana Louis
Burns Doane Swecker & Mathis L.L.P.
Esaote S.p.A.
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