Surgery – Diagnostic testing – Detecting nuclear – electromagnetic – or ultrasonic radiation
Reexamination Certificate
1999-06-30
2001-05-15
Lateef, Marvin M. (Department: 3737)
Surgery
Diagnostic testing
Detecting nuclear, electromagnetic, or ultrasonic radiation
C382S305000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06231508
ABSTRACT:
This invention relates to ultrasonic diagnostic imaging systems and, in particular, to ultrasonic diagnostic imaging systems which digitally store and retrieve ultrasonic image information.
One of the advantages that diagnostic ultrasound has had over many other diagnostic imaging modalities is the ability to produce realtime images. The advantage has been especially significant in echocardiography where the physiology of a continually moving organ, the heart, are the subject of study. Realtime imaging has been a virtual necessity in echocardiography as compared with abdominal and obstetrical applications where the tissues and organs being studies are stationary and may be readily examined by static imaging. Echocardiologists, like other practitioners of diagnostic ultrasound, make records of their ultrasound examinations for subsequent diagnosis, review, and comparison. Since echocardiography studies use realtime ultrasonic imaging, they are conventionally recorded on videotape with a VCR, rather than being recorded statically on film or as photographic prints. A VCR has been an essential accessory for an echocardiography system for many years.
Over time ultrasonic imaging systems have become increasingly digital, whereas VCRs have remained recorders of analog video signals. Thus it has been necessary to convert the digital ultrasound images produced by the digital scan converter of an ultrasound system into modulated and synchronized video signals before the images can be recorded by a VCR. This conversion does not contribute to the quality of the image, and often is detrimental to image resolution. This detriment has been viewed as one which must be accepted, however, since the VCR has traditionally provided the only efficient means for recording many minutes of live, realtime echocardiographic image sequences.
The present invention is directed to replacing the VCR with an all-digital means for storing realtime ultrasonic image sequences, including the capability of marking ultrasonic images and sequences of particular interest in real time for subsequent review. As the clinician is acquiring real time images, the clinician can depress a switch or button to electronically designate an image of interest. In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the electronic mark can designate either a particular image in the sequence, or the cardiac cycle being viewed. The images and the electronic marks are stored digitally, and on replay the controls for reviewing the stored images enable the clinician to jump directly from viewing one marked image to another, or from one marked cardiac cycle to another for rapid review of the cardiac images of interest.
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Davis, Dobutamine Stress Echo, Stress Echocardiography (Krannert Institute of Cardiology, 1989).
Burton Jeffrey W.
Jones Philip V.
Miller Edward A.
ATL Ultrasound
Imam Ali M.
Lateef Marvin M.
Yorks, Jr. W. Brinton
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