The present disclosure relates to the technology of electrical impedance tomography, and in particular to an electrical impedance tomography based method and device for generating three-dimensional blood perfusion image.
Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a non-invasive technique that aims at the resistivity distribution in the human body or other organisms and reconstructs images of tissues in vivo. The human body is a large biological electrical conductor, and all tissues and organs have certain impedance. When a disease occurs in a certain part of an organ of the human body, the impedance of the diseased part must be different from that of other parts. Therefore, impedance measurement can be used to diagnose the diseases of human organs.
The existing EIT methods can only reconstruct two-dimensional blood perfusion images. The two-dimensional image reflects an electrical impedance change caused by blood perfusion in a certain section of a human body region to be measured, but it is hard to reflect blood perfusion in a volume area in a three-dimensional space.
Therefore, it is necessary to provide an electrical impedance tomography based method and device for generating three-dimensional blood perfusion image, which are able to reconstruct a three-dimensional blood perfusion image based on a result of an electrical impedance measurement.
As stated above, in order to solve the problems existing in the prior art, an objective of the present disclosure is to provide a method and device for generating a three-dimensional blood perfusion image. The method and device perform electrical impedance measurement on a human body region to be measured, extract a blood perfusion signal from a measurement signal, and reconstruct a three-dimensional blood perfusion image. Alternatively, the method and device reconstruct a three-dimensional differential image based on the measurement signal, and extract the three-dimensional blood perfusion image reflected by the blood perfusion signal in the measurement signal from the three-dimensional differential image. The three-dimensional blood perfusion image generated by the method and device can be displayed by a display apparatus.
According to an embodiment of the present disclosure, a first aspect of the present disclosure provides an electrical impedance tomography based method for generating three-dimensional blood perfusion image. The method may include the following steps: performing, by using an electrode array distributed in a three-dimensional space, electrical impedance measurement on a human body region to be measured so as to obtain an electrical impedance measurement signal; and reconstructing, on the basis of a blood perfusion signal in the electrical impedance measurement signal, a three-dimensional blood perfusion image by means of an image reconstruction algorithm.
In an implementation, the method according to the first aspect of the present disclosure may further include: extracting the blood perfusion signal from the electrical impedance measurement signal; and reconstructing, by using the extracted blood perfusion signal, the three-dimensional blood perfusion image by means of the image reconstruction algorithm.
In this case, the extracting the blood perfusion signal from the electrical impedance measurement signal may further include: extracting the blood perfusion signal from the electrical impedance measurement signal by using a time-frequency characteristic thereof.
In an implementation, the extracting the blood perfusion signal from the electrical impedance measurement signal by using a time-frequency characteristic thereof may include: separating, by a band-pass filter, a signal of a specific frequency range from the electrical impedance measurement signal to form the blood perfusion signal.
In addition, the method according to the first aspect of the present disclosure may further include: reconstructing, on the basis of the electrical impedance measurement signal, a three-dimensional differential image by means of the image reconstruction algorithm; and extracting the three-dimensional blood perfusion image reflected by the blood perfusion signal in the electrical impedance measurement signal from the three-dimensional differential image.
In this case, the extracting the three-dimensional blood perfusion image reflected by the blood perfusion signal in the electrical impedance measurement signal from the three-dimensional differential image may further include: extracting the three-dimensional blood perfusion image by using a time-frequency characteristic of a pixel in the three-dimensional differential image.
In an implementation, the extracting the three-dimensional blood perfusion image by using a time-frequency characteristic of a pixel in the three-dimensional differential image may include: separating, by a band-pass filter, a signal of a specific frequency range from a time-domain signal of each pixel in the three-dimensional differential image, so as to form a time-domain signal of a corresponding pixel in the three-dimensional blood perfusion image.
In the method according to the first aspect of the present disclosure, in an implementation, the electrode array may be disposed on one or more impedance belts, an electrode vest, or an electrode cap, so as to realize three-dimensional distribution of electrodes.
According to an embodiment of the present disclosure, a second aspect of the present disclosure provides an electrical impedance tomography based device for generating a three-dimensional blood perfusion image. The device may include: an electrode array, distributed in a three-dimensional space, and configured to perform electrical impedance measurement on a human body region to be measured so as to obtain an electrical impedance measurement signal; and an image reconstruction processor, configured to execute a program stored in a memory, so as to reconstruct, on the basis of a blood perfusion signal in the electrical impedance measurement signal, a three-dimensional blood perfusion image by means of an image reconstruction algorithm.
In the device according to the second aspect of the present disclosure, in an implementation, the image reconstruction processor may be further configured to: execute a program stored in the memory, so as to extract the blood perfusion signal from the electrical impedance measurement signal; and reconstruct, by using the extracted blood perfusion signal, the three-dimensional blood perfusion image by means of the image reconstruction algorithm.
In addition, in the device according to the second aspect of the present disclosure, the image reconstruction processor may be further configured to: execute a program stored in the memory, so as to reconstruct a three-dimensional differential image by means of the image reconstruction algorithm; and extract the three-dimensional blood perfusion image reflected by the blood perfusion signal in the electrical impedance measurement signal from the three-dimensional differential image.
In the device according to the second aspect of the present disclosure, in an implementation, the electrode array may be disposed on one or more impedance belts, an electrode vest, or an electrode cap, so as to realize three-dimensional distribution of electrodes.
A three-dimensional image of electrical impedance variations caused by blood perfusion can be generated by the method and device for generating a three-dimensional blood perfusion image according to the embodiments of the present disclosure. Compared with two-dimensional images in the prior art, the three-dimensional image can more intuitively reflect the blood perfusion condition of a volume area in the three-dimensional space of a human body region, and facilitates image analysis and comparison, and disease detection and diagnosis.
The present disclosure is described below with reference to the accompanying drawings and embodiments.
The accompanying drawings are for illustrative purposes only and should not be construed as limiting the present disclosure. The technical solutions of the present disclosure are described in further detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings and embodiments.
As shown in
During the electrical impedance measurement, firstly the electrode array should be fixed around the human body region to be measured. The electrode array includes multiple electrodes distributed in the three-dimensional space. Then, the human body region to be measured is excited by the electrode array, and a resulting response is measured. For example, current excitations are applied to electrodes in turn, and resulting voltage signals are measured on other electrodes in turn.
In an implementation, a sensing module including the electrodes is fixed in the human body region to be measured, such as around the thoracic cavity, brain, abdomen or limbs, in the form of an electrode array on an impedance belt, an electrode vest or an electrode cap. In some embodiments, the electrodes may take the form of in-vivo electrodes. The so-called internal electrode refers to placing the electrodes in the esophagus, trachea or other internal positions in the human body.
According to a preferred embodiment of the present disclosure, the signal measurement may be performed by an electrode array in the form of one or more impedance belts, an electrode vest, or an electrode cap, etc. That is, the electrode array is disposed on one or more impedance belts, an electrode vest, or an electrode cap, so as to realize three-dimensional distribution of the electrodes. In an implementation, in order to make the reconstructed image have three-dimensional resolution, the electrode array is generally distributed in a three-dimensional space, rather than in a two-dimensional plane or an approximate two-dimensional plane. In order to distribute the electrode array in a three-dimensional space, multiple impedance belts may be used. Alternatively, an electrode vest or an electrode cap, in which the electrodes are distributed in three dimensions, may also be used.
The electrical impedance measurement signal may be a voltage signal, specifically a complex voltage signal. The complex voltage signal may be expressed in terms of amplitude and phase, or it may be expressed in terms of real and imaginary parts.
Then, the method proceeds to Step 120, where a three-dimensional blood perfusion image is reconstructed by means of an image reconstruction algorithm based on a blood perfusion signal in the electrical impedance measurement signal.
Step 120 may be implemented in two ways.
As shown in
In this step, it is necessary to extract the blood perfusion signal from the electrical impedance measurement signal acquired in the previous step. According to a preferred embodiment of the present disclosure, the blood perfusion signal may be extracted from the electrical impedance measurement signal acquired in the previous step by using a time-frequency characteristic thereof. In an implementation, the blood perfusion signal is separated from the measured electrical impedance signal by a filter.
The following takes a measurement signal of a human thoracic cavity as an example to illustrate this step.
The filtered signal is shown in
In the above example, a signal of a specific frequency range is separated from the electrical impedance measurement signal by a band-pass filter to form the blood perfusion signal.
In Step 122A, based on the extracted blood perfusion signal, the three-dimensional blood perfusion image is reconstructed by the image reconstruction algorithm.
Generally, if the reconstruction of a pulmonary blood perfusion image is taken as an example, the reconstruction process is as follows: first, extracting perfusion signals from measurement data, and then performing image reconstruction based on a difference of the perfusion signals at different times. The three-dimensional blood perfusion image reflects changes in electrical impedance, such as changes in electrical conductivity, in the measured human body region due to blood perfusion. Therefore, the changes of lung blood content at different times are displayed accordingly.
In a preferred embodiment of the present disclosure, the image reconstruction algorithm is a linear differential imaging algorithm. The following is an example of a linear differential imaging algorithm.
It is assumed that a time-domain form of the perfusion signal extracted in the previous step is u(t), t being a time variable. Thus, the EIT differential reconstruction can be expressed as the following least squares problem:
wherein J denotes a Jacobian matrix; δu = u(t2) - u(t1) denotes a change of the signal at a time t2 relative to a time t1; δσ denotes a conductivity change caused by blood perfusion at the two times; R denotes a regularization matrix; and α denotes a regularization parameter. δσ is defined in a discretized three-dimensional model, such as a tetrahedral grid or a voxel grid. The solution to the above problem is
Supposing that D = (JT · J + αRT · R)-1 · JT, then the above expression can be rewritten as:
δσ∗ is the calculated blood perfusion image.
In the above example, the linear differential imaging algorithm is specifically used to calculate and reconstruct the three-dimensional blood perfusion image. However, those of ordinary skill in the art should understand that the image reconstruction algorithms that can be utilized in the present disclosure may include a variety of image reconstruction algorithms: linear or non-linear, iterative or non-iterative, random or deterministic image reconstruction algorithms, etc.
Then, refer to
In this step, the image reconstruction algorithm may be the same image reconstruction algorithm as in the first preferred embodiment 100A of the present disclosure.
Then proceeds to Step 122B, where the three-dimensional blood perfusion image reflected by the blood perfusion signal in the electrical impedance measurement signal is extracted from the three-dimensional differential image. According to a preferred embodiment of the present disclosure, the three-dimensional blood perfusion image may be extracted from the three-dimensional differential image by using a time-frequency characteristic of the image signal. In an implementation, the three-dimensional blood perfusion image is separated from the three-dimensional differential image by a filter.
The following is an example of the above measurement signal of the human thoracic cavity.
The band-pass filter performs a filtering operation on the time-domain signal of each pixel in the three-dimensional differential image. The signal acquired by filtering the sample pixel is shown in
A three-dimensional blood perfusion image is acquired after filtering each pixel in the above three-dimensional differential image. The three-dimensional blood perfusion image reflects changes in electrical impedance, such as changes in electrical conductivity, in the measured human body region due to blood perfusion. Therefore, the image reflects the changes in lung blood content at different times.
It is apparent that the difference between the two implementations of Step 120 of the method 100 shown in
As shown in
According to a preferred embodiment of the present disclosure, the electrode array 710 may be disposed on one or more impedance belts, an electrode vest, or an electrode cap, so as to realize three-dimensional distribution of electrodes.
According to a preferred implementation of the present disclosure, the image reconstruction processor 720 may be further configured to: execute a program stored in the memory, so as to extract the blood perfusion signal from the electrical impedance measurement signal; and reconstruct, by using the extracted blood perfusion signal, the three-dimensional blood perfusion image by means of the image reconstruction algorithm.
In an implementation, the image reconstruction processor 720 may be configured to extract the blood perfusion signal from the electrical impedance measurement signal by using a time-frequency characteristic of the signal. In an implementation, the image reconstruction processor 720 may be configured to separate, by a band-pass filter, a signal of a specific frequency range from the electrical impedance measurement signal to form the blood perfusion signal.
In a specific embodiment of the present disclosure, the image reconstruction algorithm is a linear differential imaging algorithm. However, those of ordinary skill in the art should understand that the image reconstruction algorithms that can be utilized in the present disclosure may include a variety of image reconstruction algorithms: linear or non-linear, iterative or non-iterative, random or deterministic image reconstruction algorithms, etc.
In addition, in another implementation of the present disclosure, the image reconstruction processor 720 may be further configured to: execute a program stored in the memory, so as to reconstruct a three-dimensional differential image by means of the image reconstruction algorithm; and extract the three-dimensional blood perfusion image reflected by the blood perfusion signal in the electrical impedance measurement signal from the three-dimensional differential image.
In an implementation, the image reconstruction processor 720 may use the same image reconstruction algorithm as in the first implementation when reconstructing the three-dimensional differential image. The image reconstruction processor 720 may be configured to extract the three-dimensional blood perfusion image by using a time-frequency characteristic of a pixel in the three-dimensional differential image. In an implementation, the image reconstruction processor 720 may be configured to separate, by a band-pass filter, the three-dimensional blood perfusion image from the three-dimensional differential image.
In addition, although not shown in
Furthermore, those of ordinary skill in the art should understand that the method of the present disclosure may be implemented by using a computer program. As described above in conjunction with
Therefore, according to the present disclosure, a computer program or a computer-readable medium for recording an instruction executable by a processor may further be proposed. When the instruction is executed by the processor, the processor implements an electrical impedance tomography based method for generating a three-dimensional blood perfusion image, which includes the following steps: performing, by using an electrode array distributed in a three-dimensional space, electrical impedance measurement on a human body region to be measured so as to obtain an electrical impedance measurement signal; and reconstructing, on the basis of a blood perfusion signal in the electrical impedance measurement signal, a three-dimensional blood perfusion image by means of an image reconstruction algorithm.
Various embodiments and implementations of the present disclosure have been described above, but the spirit and scope of the present disclosure are not limited thereto. Those skilled in the art may implement more applications according to the teachings of the present disclosure, but these applications are all within the scope of this disclosure.
In other words, the above-mentioned embodiments of the present disclosure are only examples for clearly illustrating the present disclosure, rather than limiting the implementations of the present disclosure. Those of ordinary skill in the art may make modifications or variations in other forms based on the above description. It is unnecessary and impossible to enumerate all the embodiments here. Any modifications, equivalent replacements, improvements, etc. made within the spirit and principle of the present disclosure should be included within the protection scope of the claims of the present disclosure.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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201911424085.5 | Dec 2019 | CN | national |
The present disclosure claims the priority to Chinese Pat. Application No. CN201911424085.5, titled “ELECTRICAL IMPEDANCE TOMOGRAPHY BASED METHOD AND DEVICE FOR GENERATING THREE-DIMENSIONAL BLOOD PERFUSION IMAGE”, filed on Dec. 31, 2019, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
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PCT/CN2020/106754 | 8/4/2020 | WO |