Patent EP0702247A2 successfully refreshed from Google Patents.
EP0702247A2
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EP
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Ultrasonic visualisation method and apparatus
Assignee: Intravascular Research Ltd
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Filing: 1995-09-06
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Granted: —
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Expires: 2015-09-06
Abstract
Abstract An ultrasound system comprising a transducer array and means for energising each element, or batches of elements, of the array in turn to generate an ultra sound pulse, means for processing an echo pulse received by each transducer, and control means for controlling the order in which a transducer or transducers are energised and the order in which a transducer or transducers receive an echo pulse, characterised in that the echoes resulting from the transmission of an ultrasonic pulse from any one transducer element are received by at least one other transducer element. There is also the feature that data from the array is digitised and procesed in a pipeline, the latter having means to divert/extract data from the pipeline and reintroduce it into the pipeline to enable images to be displayed retrospectively. There is also the feature that the ring down problem is overcome by the steps of generating a reference scan and updating it on the basis of a long term running average and then subtracting that running average from the current A-scan to remove the ring down.
Inventors
- 👤 Christopher John Barlow
- 👤 Robert Julian Dickinson
- 👤 Robin Hamilton
- 👤 Derek Kelley
- 👤 Richard Ian Kitney
- 👤 Patrick Joseph Ryan
- 👤 David Andrew Wicks
Bibliographic Details
Application Number
—
Jurisdiction
EP
Data Source
google_patents
Last Synchronized
2026-11-03 06:48
CPC Classifications
G; G01; G01S; G01S7/00; G01S7/52; G01S7/52017; G01S7/52023; G01S7/52025; G01S7/52026; G01S15/00; G01S15/88; G01S15/89; G01S15/8906; G01S15/8909; G01S15/8915; G01S15/8925; G01S15/8927; G01S7/52019; G01S7/5202; G10; G10K; G10K11/00; G10K11/18; G10K11/26; G10K11/34; G10K11/341; G01S7/52053; G01S7/52057; G01S7/52058; G01S7/523; G01S7/526; G01S7/53
Claims Analysis
Total Claims: 29
Claim 1
Independent Claim
151 words
An ultrasound system comprising a transducer array having a plurality of transducer elements, means for energising each transducer element, or batches of elements, of the array in turn to generate an ultrasound pulse, means for processing an analogue echo pulse received by each transducer, and control means for controlling the order in which a transducer or transducers are energised and the order in which a transducer or transducers receive an echo pulse, means for receiving the echoes resulting from the transmission of an ultrasonic pulse from one transducer element by at least two other transducer elements, so that the data used to create the image of the echo signals comes from the said two other transducer elements, means to carry out the transmission and the reception sequentially, means to acquire sequentially the data for a whole aperture, means to store the acquired data and means to post-process the data for beam-formation.
Claim 2
Dependent Claim
41 words
A system as claimed in claim 1 having means to receive the echoes by at least two other transducer elements so that the data used to create the image of the echo signals comes from the said two other transducer elements.
Claim 3
Dependent Claim
18 words
A system as claimed in claim 1 including a multiplexer having means to select all the available cross-products.
Claim 4
Dependent Claim
34 words
A system as claimed in claim 1 including a multiplexer having means to select less than all the available cross-products whereby the multiplexer can be made of simpler construction than otherwise would be possible.
Claim 5
Dependent Claim
56 words
A system as claimed in claim 1 having a plurality of signal lines and means for switching one signal line to the transmitting element and another signal line to the receiving element so that transmission and reception can take place on different transducer elements and switching between the transmitting phase and reception phase is not required.
Claim 6
Dependent Claim
229 words
An ultrasound system comprising a transducer array having a plurality of transducer elements, means for energising each transducer element, or batches of elements, of the array in turn to generate an ultrasound pulse, means for processing an analogue echo pulse received by each transducer, and control means for controlling the order in which a transducer or transducers are energised and the order in which a transducer or transducers receive an echo pulse, means for receiving the echoes resulting from the transmission of an ultrasonic pulse from one transducer element by at least two other transducer elements, so that the data used to create the image of the echo signals comes from the said two other transducer elements, means to carry out the transmission and the reception sequentially, means to acquire sequentially the data for a whole aperture, means to store the acquired data, means to post-process the data for beam-formation, there being means to convert the analogue echo signals to digital signals, symmetric data combiner means, means to feed the said digital signals to the symmetric data combiner means whereby the amount of data to subsequent be processed is reduced, beam-forming means comprising a DSP master and a DSP slave, means to feed the output from the symmetric data combiner to the beam-forming means, display means, means to feed the output from the beam-forming means to the display means.
Claim 7
Dependent Claim
69 words
A system as claimed in claim 6 in which there are a plurality of means to convert the analogue echo signals into digital signals, a plurality of symmetric data combiner means, means to connect the output of a respective analogue echo signal converter means to a respective symmetric data combiner means and means to connect the outputs of the plurality of symmetric data combiner means to the beam-former means.
Claim 8
Dependent Claim
24 words
A system as claimed in claim 6 or 7 having high speed memory means, means to load coefficients into the high speed memory means.
Claim 9
Dependent Claim
56 words
A system as claimed in claim 6 or 7 in which the DSP master means comprises a plurality of DSP processors there being means to enable each said processor to process a fraction of the range of the data from the symmetric data combining means so that parallel processing of the data can be carried out.
Claim 10
Dependent Claim
23 words
A system as claimed in claim 6 in which the symmetric data combining means comprises a FIFO memory means and programmable adder means.
Claim 11
Dependent Claim
16 words
A system as claimed in claim 8 having optimisation process means to generate said filter coefficients.
Claim 12
Dependent Claim
48 words
A system as claimed in claim 8 in which the said coefficients are given by the equation: where r i ,r j are the distances from the field point r to the elements i,j respectively and A(r i ) is the sensitivity at point r from element i.
Claim 13
Dependent Claim
155 words
A catheter having mounted on its distal end a transducer array having a plurality of transducer elements, means for energising each transducer element, or batches of elements, of the array in turn to generate an ultrasound pulse, means for processing an analogue echo pulse received by each transducer, and control means for controlling the order in which a transducer or transducers are energised and the order in which a transducer or transducers receive an echo pulse, means for receiving the echoes resulting from the transmission of an ultrasonic pulse from one transducer element by at least two other transducer elements, so that the data used to create the image of the echo signals comes from the said two other transducer elements, means to carry out the transmission and the reception sequentially, means to acquire sequentially the data for a whole aperture, means to store the acquired data and means to post-process the data for beam-formation.
Claim 14
Dependent Claim
233 words
A catheter having mounted on its distal end a transducer array having a plurality of transducer elements, means for energising each transducer element, or batches of elements, of the array in turn to generate an ultrasound pulse, means for processing an analogue echo pulse received by each transducer, and control means for controlling the order in which a transducer or transducers are energised and the order in which a transducer or transducers receive an echo pulse, means for receiving the echoes resulting from the transmission of an ultrasonic pulse from one transducer element by at least two other transducer elements, so that the data used to create the image of the echo signals comes from the said two other transducer elements, means to carry out the transmission and the reception sequentially, means to acquire sequentially the data for a whole aperture, means to store the acquired data, means to post-process the data for beam-formation, there being means to convert the analogue echo signals to digital signals, symmetric data combiner means, means to feed the said digital signals to the symmetric data combiner means whereby the amount of data to subsequent be processed is reduced, beam-forming means comprising a DSP master and a DSP slave, means to feed the output from the symmetric data combiner to the beam-forming means, display means, means to feed the output from the beam-forming means to the display means.
Claim 15
Dependent Claim
167 words
An intravascular ultrasound imaging system having the following combination of features: (a) a transducer array mounted on the distal end of a catheter and electrically connected to a transceiver at the proximal end of the catheter; (b) the transceiver includes means for converting analogue echo signals generated by the ultrasound transducer into digital signals and means for processing those digital signals in a pipeline to produce a real-time image on a display; (c) the pipeline consists of a number of data processing stages, and the data set varies in size at different points in the pipeline, and includes means to divert/extract the data at a convenient point in the pipeline from the pipeline and store it in a dedicated memory; (d) the pipeline includes a means to divert/extract data from the pipeline and to store it in the memory; and (e) means to recall the stored data and reintroduce it into the pipeline at the same point that it was removed to retrospectively display the stored image.
Claim 16
Dependent Claim
28 words
A system as claimed in claim 15 in which the data is extracted at a point in the pipeline where the data sent is at a minimum size.
Claim 17
Dependent Claim
20 words
A system as claimed in claim 15 or 16 having means to store the extracted data in a non-volatile memory.
Claim 18
Dependent Claim
19 words
A system as claimed in claim 17 in which the memory is in the form of a disc drive.
Claim 19
Independent Claim
28 words
A system as claimed in any previous claim having means to control the real-time storage and retrieval of image sequences in the processing pipeline using screen based controls.
Claim 20
Independent Claim
18 words
A system as claimed in any previous claim having means to store data in a database file system.
Claim 21
Independent Claim
43 words
A method of overcoming the ring down problem comprises the steps of generating a reference scan and updating it on the basis of a long term running average and then subtracting that running average from the current A-scan to remove the ring down.
Claim 22
Dependent Claim
17 words
A method as claimed in claim 21 in which the reference scan is generated having no echoes.
Claim 23
Dependent Claim
24 words
A method as claimed in claim 21 in which the reference scan is generated by calculating a long term average which eliminates the echoes.
Claim 24
Independent Claim
25 words
A method as claimed in any previous claim in which the long term running average is obtained by the use of simple order recursive filtering.
Claim 25
Dependent Claim
87 words
In an ultrasonic system for imaging the internal organs of the internal body by employing a transducer array mounted on the distal end of a catheter, there are means for overcoming the "ringdown" problem which means comprise: (a) means for obtaining a reference scan having no echoes; (b) means for subtracting from an acquired scan the reference signal/scan; and (c) means for updating the reference scan on the basis of obtaining a running average over a period which is significantly greater than the period between consecutive scans.
Claim 26
Dependent Claim
18 words
Apparatus as claimed in claim 25 having a long term memory under program control to store temporary A-scans.
Claim 27
Dependent Claim
28 words
Apparatus as claimed in claim 5 or 6 including means for temporarily interrupting the updating of the reference scan to accommodate the situation where the echoes are stationary.
Claim 28
Dependent Claim
27 words
Apparatus as claimed in any one of claims 2 to 27 having means for automatically setting the value of α as defined in Equations 4 and 5.
Claim 29
Dependent Claim
29 words
Apparatus as claimed in any one of claims 25 to 28 comprising a recursive filter arrangement, which is adapted to implement the recursive algorithm set out in Equation 9.
References Cited (Backward Citations)
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