Patent Application
20230181168
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. This patent document may show and/or describe matter which is or may become trade dress of the owner. The copyright and trade dress owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent disclosure as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright and trade dress rights whatsoever.
This patent claims priority from Chinese Patent Application No. 202111538537.X, filed Dec. 15, 2021 entitled, “DISTRIBUTED ULTRASONIC SCANNING SYSTEM AND COMMUNICATION METHOD” the entirety of which is incorporated herein by reference.
The invention relates to the technical field of medical image processing, and more particularly, to a distributed ultrasonic scanning system and a communication method.
Medical ultrasound testing is an ultrasound-based medical diagnostic imaging technique. It is used to visualize patient's muscles, internal organs including large or small body structures, and pathology lesions in vitro, assisting a doctor in making an effective diagnosis for the patient's disease. An ultrasonic scanning device is a medical instrument with which the above-mentioned technique is applied. The device detects all body structures of the patient by transmitting ultrasonic waves and detecting the echo of the waves, so as to assist the doctor with the medical diagnosis. Generally, the ultrasonic scanning device comprises at least one scanning probe, and at least one transducer is provided in the scanning probe for emitting ultrasonic waves to the patient, and echo of the ultrasonic waves are received by the at least one scanning probe. The ultrasonic scanning device can be generally divided into the following categories, for example, A-type ultrasonic detection, B-type ultrasonic detection, D-type ultrasonic detection, M-type ultrasonic detection, ultrasound elastography, and contrast-enhanced ultrasound imaging according to their detection methods. The B-type ultrasonic detection, a grayscale ultrasound image, is the most commonly used ultrasonic testing means in the medical examination.
In the prior art, since the image reconstruction of the ultrasonic scanning device needs to occupy a lot of computing resources, the existing ultrasonic scanning device usually comprises a large host to process the received ultrasonic echoes. Thus, the ultrasonic scanning device is usually arranged in a specific location and it is hard to move. At the same time, in practice, the inventor found that due to a poor compatibility design between ultrasonic scanning devices in different ages and from different manufacturers, the existing ultrasonic scanning data flow was not smooth, and it could not well meet the requirements of medical digitization. In addition, it is difficult to use artificial intelligence technology to further process images, which leads to the problem of poor diagnosis and treatment. Furthermore, since the existing ultrasonic scanning device can usually only be set up in a specific location, when a patient needs an ultrasound scan, he/she has to go to a healthcare institution, so it cannot well meet the needs for some patients to perform ultrasonic scanning operations at home or in the community.
Given that the foregoing problems exist in the prior art, the present invention provides a distributed ultrasonic scanning system and a communication method.
A detailed technical solution is as follows:
Preferably, the ultrasonic scanning system further comprises a terminal processing device;
Preferably, the terminal processing device comprises:
Preferably, the ultrasonic scanning system further comprises:
Preferably, the ultrasonic scanning system further comprises an image recognition unit;
Preferably, the ultrasonic scanning system further comprises an auxiliary diagnostic unit;
Preferably, the information management unit is connected to a plurality of medical terminals;
Preferably, each of the plurality of medical terminals has a corresponding healthcare institution identifier and a hospital department identifier;
A communication method applicable for the ultrasonic scanning system as described above, wherein the data acquisition unit in the ultrasonic scanning system is connected to the processing host through a plurality of gateway devices, the communication method comprises:
Preferably, Step S4 further comprises:
By adopting the above-mentioned technical solutions, the present invention has the beneficial effects that a data acquisition unit is provided to enable ultrasonic image data to effectively flow in a hospital or regional network, so that the problem of a poor flow of the ultrasonic image data in the prior art is avoided. A high-quality reconstruction of the ultrasonic image is carried out by a processing host, ensuring a volume of a scanning device is reduced without compromising the imaging quality, so that it is easy to move the scanning device.
Embodiments of the present invention will be fully illustrated with reference to the accompanying drawings, however, which are given for the sake of clarification and description only, without limiting the scope of the invention.
The technical solution set forth in the embodiments of the present invention will now be described clearly and fully hereinafter with reference to the accompanying drawings of the embodiments of the present invention. Obviously, such embodiments provided in the present invention are only part of the embodiments instead of all embodiments. It should be understood that all the other embodiments obtained from the embodiments set forth in the present invention by one skilled in the art without any creative work fall within the scope of the present invention.
Notably, the embodiments set forth in the present invention and features of the embodiments may be combined in any suitable manner.
The present invention will be described hereinafter with reference to the accompanying drawings and particular embodiments, but the invention is not limited thereto.
The invention comprises:
In particular, due to the fact that an ultrasonic scanning device in the prior art is large in size and is arranged in a fixed location, it cannot be moved as desired to be suited for scenarios where examining a patient in a ward is required. For this purpose, in this embodiment, echo data is obtained by providing the data acquisition unit 2, then image reconstruction is done by the processing host 3, so that a volume of the ultrasonic scanning device 1 is reduced, and thus mobility of the ultrasonic scanning device 1 is realized.
During the process of the detection, the ultrasonic scanning device 1 may be a hand-held ultrasonic scanning device, which has wired or wireless communication capabilities to connect to the data acquisition unit 2 through Ethernet, optical fiber, WLAN, cellular mobile network, radio frequency communication and other means, so as to send the echo data to the data acquisition unit 2. It should be noted that the echo data may be an original ultrasonic echo sequence obtained by the scanning probe, or it may be echo data after being subjected to data compression. The processing host 3 may be one or more general-purpose computers, application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), DSPs, programmable logic devices (PLDs), complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), general-purpose processors, controllers, microcontrollers (MCUs), microprocessors or other electronic components to achieve the above-mentioned communication and data processing functions. Upon receipt of the compressed data, the processing host 3 can decompress the compressed data to obtain the above-mentioned echo data, and to obtain a first ultrasonic image by reconstructing the echo data. The first ultrasonic image may be a single ultrasonic image, or a continuous ultrasound image with a preset time length. The information management unit 4 can be used as an embodiment of a software, which is a part of a hospital information system. The information management unit 4 obtains and stores the first ultrasonic image via the hospital or regional network, and distributes data to the medical terminals 5 according to a corresponding preset condition. The medical terminal 5 may be a computer installed in a specific healthcare institution, a department or at home, which is used for reading patient medical records, for issuing prescriptions, etc.
It should be noted that the gateway devices A1, the medical terminals 5 and other devices in
As an optional embodiment, after the processing host 3 completes the image reconstruction and forms the above-mentioned first ultrasound image, the first ultrasonic image can be sent to the information processing unit 4 through the gateway device A1, and then the information processing unit 4 stores the first ultrasound image, so that the first ultrasound image can be transmitted to the medical terminals 5 for review of doctors during the diagnosis and treatment process. Or, the processing host 3 transmits the first ultrasonic image to the a display screen B1 through the gateway device A1 to display the first ultrasonic image on the display screen B1.
During the process of detection, the display screen B1 may be a display screen in a mobile terminal, such as a mobile phone, a tablet or a notebook, which establishes a communication connection with the gateway device A1 to receive the first ultrasonic image sent from the processing host 3, or it may be other display screens with a network connection function, such as smart TVs. Alternatively, the display screen B1 may also be connected to the gateway device A1 through an image processing device with a network connection function (not shown in the figures), and the first ultrasonic image is displayed by converting an Ethernet signal into a video signal through the image processing device.
In a preferred embodiment, as shown in
In particular, it is known that the ultrasonic scanning device in the prior art cannot be well adapted to the mobile scanning scene. In this embodiment, a terminal processing device 5 is added to the ultrasonic scanning system to realize image reconstruction of the ultrasonic echo data, and thus in a case where the processing host 3 is not connected, a quick and rough scan image can be obtained by reducing the imaging quality.
During the process of detection, the terminal processing device 5 may be a terminal device with basic graphics processing capabilities, such as a mobile phone, a tablet, a laptop or other devices with a GPU. Those terminal devices may be connected to the data acquisition unit 2 or the ultrasonic scanning device 1 in a wired or wireless manner, for example via a coaxial cable, a bus, an Ethernet, an optical fiber, WLAN or other radio frequency communication means, so as to receive the echo data. The reduction in imaging quality is mainly reflected in that at least one of the parameters, such as a resolution, a gray level, and a frame rate of the second ultrasonic image is inferior to those of the first ultrasonic image, thereby reducing the requirements for the graphics processing capability of the terminal processing device 5, so as to better adapt to the requirements of mobile scanning operations.
As an optional embodiment, the terminal processing device 5 may also receive the first ultrasonic image returned from the data acquisition unit 2 and generated by the processing host 3, so as to obtain a high-quality scan image nearby.
In a preferred embodiment, as shown in
In particular, in the mobile scanning scenario, a wireless condition or transmission distance of a specific location cannot well meet the connection requirements between the terminal processing device 5 and the ultrasonic scanning device 1. Therefore, in this embodiment, the loop detection module 52 is added to the terminal processing device 5 for detecting the communication connection status. In addition, the connection is adjusted in real time according to the communication connection to obtain a stable image transmission effect. Or, the addition of the loop detection module 52 facilitates users far away from the ultrasonic scanning device 1 to carry out relay communication through the data acquisition unit 2, to remotely obtain a second ultrasonic image.
During the process of detection, the communication connection status comprises at least one of received signal strength, signal transmission delay, and packet loss rate, and the preset condition is a parameter threshold set for the communication connection status. When any corresponding parameter triggers the parameter threshold, the loop detection module 52 immediately controls the communication module 51 to establish the communication connection with the data acquisition unit 2.
As an optional embodiment, when the first ultrasonic image and the second ultrasonic image need to be generated at the same time, the ultrasonic scanning device 1 performs a handshake with the data acquisition unit 2 and the terminal processing device 5 respectively to determine a transmission identifier, and then performs broadcast communication in a specific frequency band to send the echo data to the data acquisition unit 2 and the terminal processing device 5 at the same time, thereby reducing the demand for the communication capability of the ultrasonic scanning device 1.
In a preferred embodiment, as shown in
In particular, in the prior art, results of ultrasonic diagnosis usually only comprise image screenshots and diagnostic conclusions issued by the imaging department. It cannot well meet the demands for medical data to be circulated in the whole hospital in a digital healthcare. In addition, doctors in other healthcare institutions or other departments or home users are not able to make further diagnosis according to the ultrasonic image. For this problem, in this embodiment, a medical record sub-module 41 is added to the information management unit 4 to record a high-quality first ultrasonic image in a patient's electronic medical record, so that the user can replay the first ultrasonic image according to actual needs, and thus can make a more accurate diagnosis.
In a preferred embodiment, as shown in
In particular, the existing ultrasonic image diagnosis is mainly made by medial personnel, so it is quite time-consuming. In this embodiment, a quick detection of lesions in the first ultrasonic image is done by the provision of the image recognition unit 6, and the lesion image is separated from the first ultrasonic image to help doctors make a quick diagnosis, and it also provides a health alert for family users.
During the process of detection, the lesion identification sub-module 61 has a lesion identification model. The lesion identification model selects a plurality of manually annotated lesion images as a training set, and can effectively identify the size and position of a target lesion, and then generates lesion information. The lesion segmentation module 62 may be a semantic segmentation model, which further separates the lesion image from the first ultrasonic image through the obtained lesion information.
In a preferred embodiment, as shown in
In particular, the diagnosis of lesion morphology in the prior art mainly relies on medical personnel and takes up a lot of human resources, in this embodiment, an auxiliary diagnostic unit 7 is added to realize a rapid judgment of the lesion morphology in the lesion image, thereby helping the doctor determine the disease progress according to the lesion morphology, and helping providing an individual health alert for family users.
During the process of detection, the identification sub-module 71 is provided with a morphological artificial intelligence model, which can determine the current shape of the lesion according to the image of the lesion, and compares the current shape with a plurality of preset lesion morphology corresponding to the disease progress to generate a confidence level of each morphology as the classification information, thereby help users judge the morphology of the current lesion.
In a preferred embodiment, the information management unit 4 is connected to a plurality of medical terminals 5;
In particular, in order to solve the problem of a relatively unsmooth flow of ultrasonic images in the prior art, in this embodiment, the information management unit distributes data to the corresponding medical terminal 5 to realize a rapid flow of overall medical record data and ultrasonic images. As a result, each user in the patient's diagnostic process can obtain the corresponding data in time.
In a preferred embodiment, each of the plurality of medical terminals 5 has a corresponding healthcare institution identifier and a hospital department identifier;
In particular, in order to achieve high circulation and readability of the medical record data, in this embodiment, the labeling sub-module 42 is added to the information management unit 4 to realize labeling processing of the first ultrasonic image, thereby facilitating the user to read out relevant information in a more clear way after he/she obtains an ultrasonic image. In addition, data labeling requirements corresponding to different healthcare institutions and departments are preset in the labeling sub-module 42, and more effective labeling information can be generated by acquiring the healthcare institution identifier and department identifier of the medical terminal and by selecting the corresponding processing flow to process.
A communication method applicable for the ultrasonic scanning system as described above, wherein the data acquisition unit in the ultrasonic scanning system is connected to the processing host through a plurality of gateway devices, as shown in
In particular, as shown in
In the meantime, the position information of the processing host 3 and the data acquisition unit 2 is also recorded in the network identifier. Processing hose 3 and the data acquisition unit 2, which are relatively close, are selected based on the relative position information therebetween, so that delay caused by the transmission can be reduced.
Furthermore, for the situation where many-to-many communication between the data acquisition unit 2 and the processing host 3 exists, this communication method also comprises a load balancing process. The load balancing process involves acquiring the remaining hardware resources of the processing host for allocating the processing host 3 to the data acquisition unit 2 according to the status of the remaining hardware resources, thereby the problem that a sudden scanning demand cannot be met due to an excessive load of parts of the processing hosts 3 can be avoided.
In a preferred embodiment, as shown in
In particular, since a large amount of data is exchanged over the local area network, in this embodiment, a step of a load condition detection for the gateway devices A1, A2, A3, and A4 is added. The load condition detection makes it possible to bypass the gateway devices A1, A2, A3, and A4 with excessive loads, so that interference with other communication services on the gateway devices A1, A2, A3, and A4 from compressed data with a relatively large amount of transmission data involved is avoided.
In a preferred embodiment, as shown in
In particular, in view of the problem that the ultrasonic scanning device in the prior art cannot well satisfy the need for the patient to perform remote diagnosis at home or in the community, in this embodiment, the user terminal 81 is arranged in the patient's mobile terminal 8 to realize a remote medical treatment for the patient.
During the process of detection, the user terminal 81 is arranged in the mobile terminal 8 as a software embodiment. The mobile terminal 8 may be a general-purpose computing device with a communication function, such as a patient's mobile phone and a tablet. It is configured to connect to an inter-hospital system via the network, and obtain an electronic medical record, a first ultrasonic image and a lesion image of the patient. The electronic medical record contains some relevant examination processes and diagnosis conclusions during the patient's stay in the hospital for diagnosis, providing effective evidence for home-based medical care.
In a preferred embodiment, the user terminal 81 is also connected to the ultrasonic scanning device 1;
In particular, since the ultrasonic scanning device 1 in the prior art is not sufficient to meet the needs for patients to perform an ultrasonic scanning operation at home or in a community, in this embodiment, a rapid reconstruction of the echo data of the ultrasonic scanning device is achieved through the user terminal 81, thus, a basic simple scanning need is met. When the patients need a first scanning image with higher quality in the community, they can remotely obtain the first ultrasonic image generated from the processing host 3 through the information management unit 4.
The present invention has the beneficial effects that a data acquisition unit is provided to enable ultrasonic image data to effectively flow in the network, so that the problem of a poor flow of the image is avoided. Here, a high-quality reconstruction of the ultrasonic image is carried out by a processing host, ensuring a volume of a scanning device is reduced without compromising the imaging quality. In addition, an image reconstruction of data, obtained by a plurality of scanning probes, is carried out by a processing host, so that a centralized processing of images is achieved, and hardware costs are reduced.
The above descriptions are only the preferred embodiments of the invention, not thus limiting the embodiments and scope of the invention. Those skilled in the art should be able to realize that the schemes obtained from the content of specification and drawings of the invention are within the scope of the invention.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 202111538537.X | Dec 2021 | CN | national |
