CN112788997A - Liver and kidney echo comparison measuring method, device, medical system and storage medium - Google Patents

Abstract

A method (200), apparatus (900), medical system and storage medium for measuring a liver and kidney echo contrast, the method (200) comprising: transmitting ultrasonic waves to the liver and kidney parts of the target object and receiving ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney parts (S710, S810), and performing ultrasonic image processing based on the ultrasonic echoes to obtain an ultrasonic image (S210, S610); acquiring a position of a liver tissue region and a position of a kidney tissue region, respectively, based on the ultrasound images, and transmitting ultrasound waves to the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region, respectively, and receiving ultrasound echoes, respectively, based on the acquired positions (S220); respectively processing the ultrasonic echo of the liver tissue region and the ultrasonic echo of the kidney tissue region to respectively obtain a first ultrasonic signal and a second ultrasonic signal, wherein the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal are both ultrasonic signals with amplitude information and phase information (S230); an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject is determined based on the first ultrasound signal and the second ultrasound signal (S240, S530, S640, S730, S830). The measurement method (200) can obtain a more accurate liver and kidney echo comparison result.

Description

Liver and kidney echo comparison measuring method, device, medical system and storage medium

Description

Technical Field

The present application relates to the field of measuring liver and kidney echo contrast, and more particularly, to a method, an apparatus, a medical system, and a storage medium for measuring liver and kidney echo contrast.

Background

In clinic, the ultrasonic diagnosis of fatty liver mainly depends on the judgment of liver echo intensity and the comparison of liver and its surrounding tissues or organs. The kidney is the organ closest to the liver and the contrast of the hepatic and renal echoes is increased, which usually means that the probability of fatty liver is increased. There are also some studies that have shown that the liver-kidney echo contrast is helpful for clinical diagnosis of chronic hepatitis B. It can be seen that the liver-kidney echo contrast is a parameter of great interest in liver ultrasound diagnosis.

In the existing liver and kidney echo comparison and measurement method, an ultrasonic image of a section where the liver and the kidney can be observed is obtained, and then a liver and kidney echo comparison result is obtained according to the brightness difference of the liver and the kidney on the ultrasonic image. However, the conventional ultrasound image is obtained by performing a lot of signal processing (such as amplification, frequency shift, image enhancement, etc.) on the ultrasound echo signal, in the processing process, the processing on the ultrasound echo signal at each position is not completely equivalent, and the steps for generating the ultrasound image by different devices are many different and difficult to unify. Therefore, the contrast result of the liver and kidney echoes cannot be accurately reflected by the brightness difference between the liver and the kidney on the ultrasonic image.

Disclosure of Invention

The present application is proposed to solve the above problems. The application provides a measurement scheme for liver and kidney echo comparison, which adopts original ultrasonic echo signals with amplitude and phase information in a liver tissue area and a kidney tissue area as a basis for judging the liver and kidney echo comparison, avoids the influence of an ultrasonic image processing process on a liver and kidney echo comparison result, and can obtain a more accurate liver and kidney echo comparison result; or still adopt the ultrasonic image as the basis of judging the comparison of the liver and kidney echoes, but adopt certain method to make the ultrasonic image process the processing of the ultrasonic echo signal of each position equal in the course of obtaining the ultrasonic image, thus can obtain the more accurate comparison result of the liver and kidney echoes.

The measurement scheme of the liver and kidney echo contrast proposed by the present application is briefly described below, and more details will be described in the following detailed description with reference to the accompanying drawings.

In one aspect of the present application, a method for measuring a liver and kidney echo contrast is provided, where the method includes: transmitting ultrasonic waves to the liver and kidney part of a target object, receiving ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney part, and processing an ultrasonic image based on the ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney part to obtain an ultrasonic image; respectively acquiring the position of a liver tissue region and the position of a kidney tissue region based on the ultrasonic image, and respectively transmitting ultrasonic waves to the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region and receiving ultrasonic echoes based on the acquired positions of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region; respectively processing the ultrasonic echo of the liver tissue region and the ultrasonic echo of the kidney tissue region to respectively obtain a first ultrasonic signal and a second ultrasonic signal, wherein the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal are both ultrasonic signals with amplitude information and phase information; and determining an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject based on the first ultrasound signal and the second ultrasound signal.

In one embodiment of the application, the signal processing comprises at least one of: gain compensation, analog-to-digital conversion, beam synthesis, quadrature demodulation, baseband signal intensity calculation and gray level logarithmic compression.

In one embodiment of the application, the signal processing comprises the gain compensation, which uses the same compensation parameters for different depths.

In one embodiment of the application, the signal processing comprises the gain compensation, the gain compensation comprises a first gain compensation and a second gain compensation, the first gain compensation adopts a compensation parameter which is increased along with the increase of the depth, and the second gain compensation adopts a compensation parameter which is decreased along with the increase of the depth.

In one embodiment of the application, the signal processing comprises the quadrature demodulation, which employs the same demodulation frequency for different depths.

In one embodiment of the present application, the signal processing includes the quadrature demodulation, and a magnitude of a demodulation frequency employed by the quadrature demodulation changes with a magnitude of the depth by an amount smaller than a threshold value.

In one embodiment of the present application, the determining an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject based on the first ultrasound signal and the second ultrasound signal comprises: determining a ratio and/or difference between a parameter of the first ultrasound signal and a parameter of the second ultrasound signal as an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject.

In an embodiment of the application, the ratio and/or difference between the parameter of the first ultrasound signal and the parameter of the second ultrasound signal comprises at least one of: the amplitude ratio, the amplitude distribution standard deviation ratio, the center frequency ratio, the frequency distribution standard deviation ratio, the amplitude difference, the center frequency difference and the amplitude distribution standard deviation difference of the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal.

In an embodiment of the present application, the value of any parameter of the first ultrasonic signal is a mean value or a median value of the parameter of the plurality of signals included in the first ultrasonic signal, and the value of any parameter of the second ultrasonic signal is a mean value or a median value of the parameter of the plurality of signals included in the second ultrasonic signal.

In one embodiment of the present application, the determining an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject based on the first ultrasound signal and the second ultrasound signal further comprises: and extracting image distribution related parameters based on the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal respectively, and comparing the image distribution related parameters.

In one embodiment of the present application, the image distribution related parameter includes histogram information and/or gray scale trip statistical information.

In one embodiment of the present application, the liver tissue region is a first target region comprising liver tissue and the kidney tissue region is a second target region comprising kidney tissue.

In one embodiment of the present application, the first target region and the second target region have the same depth.

In one embodiment of the present application, the method further comprises: after determining the echogenic differences between the liver tissue and the kidney tissue of the target subject, displaying echogenic difference results on the ultrasound image.

In an embodiment of the present application, the displaying the echo difference result on the ultrasound image includes: and directly displaying the compared parameters and the numerical result obtained by comparison on the ultrasonic image.

In an embodiment of the present application, the displaying the echo difference result on the ultrasound image includes: and displaying respective values of the same parameters of the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal in respective tissue areas by image attributes, wherein different values are displayed by adopting different image attributes.

In one embodiment of the application, the image attribute is a color or a line thickness.

In another aspect of the present application, a method for measuring a liver and kidney echo contrast is provided, where the method includes: acquiring an ultrasonic echo of a liver tissue region and an ultrasonic echo of a kidney tissue region; signal processing each of the ultrasound echoes of the liver tissue region and the ultrasound echoes of the kidney tissue region to obtain a first ultrasound signal and a second ultrasound signal, respectively, the signal processing comprising at least one of: gain compensation, analog-to-digital conversion, beam synthesis, quadrature demodulation, baseband signal intensity calculation and gray level logarithmic compression, wherein the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal are not subjected to gray level conversion; and determining an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject based on the first ultrasound signal and the second ultrasound signal.

In another aspect of the present application, a method for measuring a liver and kidney echo contrast is provided, the method including: transmitting ultrasonic waves to the liver and kidney part of a target object, receiving ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney part, and processing an ultrasonic image based on the ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney part to obtain an ultrasonic image; acquiring an ultrasonic echo of a liver tissue region and an ultrasonic echo of a kidney tissue region based on the ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney parts; signal processing each of the ultrasound echoes of the liver tissue region and the ultrasound echoes of the kidney tissue region to obtain a first ultrasound signal and a second ultrasound signal, respectively, the signal processing comprising at least one of: gain compensation, analog-to-digital conversion, beam synthesis, quadrature demodulation, baseband signal intensity calculation and gray level logarithmic compression, wherein the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal are not subjected to gray level conversion; determining an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject based on the first ultrasound signal and the second ultrasound signal; and displaying the ultrasound image and the echo difference.

In another aspect of the present application, a method for measuring a liver and kidney echo contrast is provided, the method including: transmitting ultrasonic waves to the liver and kidney parts of a target object and receiving ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney parts; performing ultrasonic image processing based on the ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney part to obtain an ultrasonic image, wherein the ultrasonic image processing at least comprises gain compensation and/or orthogonal demodulation, the gain compensation adopts the same compensation parameter for different depths, or the gain compensation comprises first gain compensation and second gain compensation, the compensation parameter adopted by the first gain compensation increases with the increase of the depth, the compensation parameter adopted by the second gain compensation decreases with the increase of the depth, the orthogonal demodulation adopts the same demodulation frequency for different depths, or the amount of change of the demodulation frequency adopted by the orthogonal demodulation along with the change of the depth is smaller than a threshold value; and determining an echogenic difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject based on the ultrasound image.

In yet another aspect of the present application, there is provided a measurement apparatus for hepatorenal echo contrast, the apparatus comprising a memory and a processor, the memory having stored thereon a computer program for execution by the processor, the computer program, when executed by the processor, performing any of the above-mentioned measurement methods for hepatorenal echo contrast.

In another aspect of the present application, a medical system is provided, which includes the above mentioned liver and kidney echo contrast measuring device.

In a further aspect of the present application, a storage medium is provided, on which a computer program is stored, which when run performs the method of measuring a liver-kidney echo contrast according to any of the above.

According to the measurement method, the measurement equipment, the medical system and the storage medium for the liver and kidney echo comparison, the original ultrasonic echo signals with amplitude and phase information in the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region are used as the basis for judging the liver and kidney echo comparison, so that the influence of the ultrasonic image processing process on the liver and kidney echo comparison result is avoided, and a more accurate liver and kidney echo comparison result can be obtained; or still adopt the ultrasonic image as the basis of judging the comparison of the liver and kidney echoes, but adopt certain method to make the ultrasonic image process the processing of the ultrasonic echo signal of each position equal in the course of obtaining the ultrasonic image, thus can obtain the more accurate comparison result of the liver and kidney echoes.

Drawings

FIG. 1 shows a schematic block diagram of an exemplary ultrasound imaging system for implementing a measurement method of liver and kidney echo contrast according to an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 2 shows a schematic flow diagram of a measurement method of liver and kidney echo contrast according to an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 3A illustrates an exemplary schematic diagram of acquiring the position of a liver tissue region and the position of a kidney tissue region, respectively, based on ultrasound images of a liver and kidney region;

FIG. 3B shows an exemplary diagram showing the results of the echo difference on an ultrasound image;

FIG. 4A shows an exemplary graph with gain compensation parameters increasing with increasing depth;

FIG. 4B illustrates an exemplary graph in which the gain compensation parameter remains constant as the depth varies;

FIG. 4C illustrates an exemplary graph in which the parameters of gain compensation increase with increasing depth;

FIG. 4D illustrates an exemplary graph in which the gain compensation parameter decreases with increasing depth;

fig. 5 shows a schematic flow diagram of a measurement method of hepatorenal echo contrast according to another embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 6 shows a schematic flow diagram of a measurement method of hepatorenal echo contrast according to yet another embodiment of the present application;

fig. 7 shows a schematic flow diagram of a measurement method of hepatorenal echo contrast according to yet another embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 8 shows a schematic flow diagram of a measurement method of hepatorenal echo contrast according to yet another embodiment of the present application; and

fig. 9 shows a schematic block diagram of a liver and kidney echo-contrast measuring device according to an embodiment of the present application.

Detailed Description

In order to make the objects, technical solutions and advantages of the present application more apparent, exemplary embodiments according to the present application will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings. It should be understood that the described embodiments are only some embodiments of the present application and not all embodiments of the present application, and that the present application is not limited by the example embodiments described herein. All other embodiments, which can be derived by a person skilled in the art from the embodiments of the application described in the application without inventive step, shall fall within the scope of protection of the application.

In the following description, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a more thorough understanding of the present application. It will be apparent, however, to one skilled in the art, that the present application may be practiced without one or more of these specific details. In other instances, well-known features of the art have not been described in order to avoid obscuring the present application.

It is to be understood that the present application is capable of implementation in various forms and should not be construed as limited to the embodiments set forth herein. Rather, these embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will be thorough and complete, and will fully convey the scope of the application to those skilled in the art.

The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of the application. As used herein, the singular forms "a", "an" and "the" are intended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. It will be further understood that the terms "comprises" and/or "comprising," when used in this specification, specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, elements, components, and/or groups thereof. As used herein, the term "and/or" includes any and all combinations of the associated listed items.

In order to provide a thorough understanding of the present application, detailed steps and detailed structures will be provided in the following description in order to explain the technical solutions proposed in the present application. The following detailed description of the preferred embodiments of the present application, however, will suggest that the present application may have additional embodiments beyond those detailed descriptions.

First, an exemplary ultrasound imaging system for implementing the measurement method and apparatus for hepatorenal echo contrast of the embodiments of the present application is described with reference to fig. 1.

Fig. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary ultrasound imaging system 10 for implementing the liver and kidney echo contrast measurement method and apparatus of the present application. As shown in fig. 1, the ultrasound imaging system 10 may include an ultrasound probe 100, a transmit/receive selection switch 101, a transmit/receive sequence controller 102, a processor 103, a display 104, and a memory 105. The transmit/receive sequence controller 102 may excite the ultrasound probe 100 to transmit ultrasound waves to the target object, and may also control the ultrasound probe 100 to receive ultrasound echoes returned from the target object, thereby obtaining ultrasound echo signals/data. The processor 103 processes the ultrasound echo signals/data to obtain tissue related parameters and ultrasound images of the target object. Ultrasound images obtained by the processor 103 may be stored in the memory 105 and displayed on the display 104.

In this embodiment, the display 104 of the ultrasonic imaging system 10 may be a touch display screen, a liquid crystal display, or the like, or may be an independent display device such as a liquid crystal display, a television, or the like, which is independent of the ultrasonic imaging system 10, or may be a display screen on an electronic device such as a mobile phone, a tablet computer, or the like.

In the embodiment of the present application, the memory 105 of the ultrasound imaging system 10 can be a flash memory card, a solid-state memory, a hard disk, or the like.

The embodiment of the present application further provides a computer-readable storage medium, where multiple program instructions are stored in the computer-readable storage medium, and after the multiple program instructions are called and executed by the processor 103, part of or all of the steps in the measurement method for liver and kidney echo contrast in the embodiments of the present application, or any combination of the steps in the measurement method for liver and kidney echo contrast may be performed.

In one embodiment, the computer readable storage medium may be memory 105, which may be a non-volatile storage medium such as a flash memory card, solid state memory, hard disk, or the like.

In the embodiment of the present application, the processor 103 of the ultrasound imaging system 10 may be implemented by software, hardware, firmware or a combination thereof, and may use an electric circuit, a single or multiple Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), a single or multiple general purpose integrated circuits, a single or multiple microprocessors, a single or multiple programmable logic devices, or a combination of the foregoing electric circuits or devices, or other suitable electric circuits or devices, so that the processor 103 may perform the corresponding steps of the measurement method for liver and kidney echo contrast in various embodiments.

The liver and kidney echo contrast measurement method of the present application, which is applicable to the aforementioned ultrasound imaging system 10, is described in detail below with reference to fig. 2 to 8. The ultrasound imaging system 10 may generate elasticity images using the ultrasound echo data, may generate conventional ultrasound B images or doppler images using the ultrasound echo data, and so on. A method 200 for measuring a hepatic and renal echo contrast according to an embodiment of the present application is first described below with reference to fig. 2. As shown in fig. 2, the method 200 for measuring the echo contrast of liver and kidney may include the following steps:

in step S210, an ultrasonic wave is transmitted to the liver and kidney portion of the target object and the ultrasonic echo of the liver and kidney portion is received, and an ultrasonic image is processed based on the ultrasonic echo of the liver and kidney portion to obtain an ultrasonic image.

In an embodiment of the application, the target object may be a patient to be subjected to a hepatorenal echo contrast measurement. An ultrasound device may be employed to transmit ultrasound waves to and receive ultrasound echoes from the liver and kidney portions of the target subject. Based on the ultrasound echo, ultrasound image processing may be performed to obtain an ultrasound image. Here, the ultrasound image processing may include various general-purpose elements such as analog signal gain compensation, beam synthesis, quadrature demodulation, digital signal gain compensation, amplitude calculation, and image enhancement, which are required in conventional ultrasound image processing. Specifically, the ultrasonic device transmits ultrasonic signals, and the transducer array elements of the probe convert the electric signals into acoustic signals to be transmitted to a target object; then, the sound signals of the ultrasonic echoes are converted into electric signals through a transducer array element of the probe; the signal is subjected to front-end filtering amplification (gain compensation) through an analog circuit and then is converted into a digital signal (analog-to-digital conversion) through an analog-to-digital converter (ADC); further, the data of each array element channel is subjected to beam forming to obtain a radio frequency signal (i.e., beam synthesis), i.e., an RF signal, and then subjected to quadrature demodulation to obtain I/Q (in-phase/quadrature) two-path quadrature signals, which are sent to a subsequent imaging processing module (i.e., quadrature demodulation).

In embodiments of the present application, applying gain compensation to the received ultrasound echo signals may mitigate subsequent processing problems due to the reduction in signal strength with depth. The processed signal is actually an analog signal, so in order to improve the signal processing efficiency and reduce the complexity of a hardware platform, an analog-to-digital converter is required to convert the analog echo signal into a digital echo signal. After the analog-to-digital conversion is completed, the channel data may be formed by performing digital beam forming according to the delay difference caused by the difference between the distances from the focus point to the channels, and the data processing performed before the digital beam forming may be collectively referred to as front-end processing. The data obtained after this stage is completed may be referred to as radio frequency signal data, i.e., RF data. So called "rf" means that the signal carries the probe receive clock frequency, and the carrier frequency is exactly in the rf band of the communications domain. After the RF data is acquired, the signal carrier is removed by IQ demodulation, the tissue structure information included in the signal is extracted, and filtering is performed to remove noise, and the signal acquired at this time is a baseband signal (IQ data). All processing required in the rf signal processing to the baseband signal may be collectively referred to as mid-end processing. Finally, the intensity of the baseband signal is obtained, and the intensity level of the baseband signal is subjected to logarithmic compression and gray scale conversion to obtain the ultrasonic image, wherein the completed processing can be collectively called back-end processing. By this point, a frame of ultrasound images is available for display.

Next, referring to fig. 2, a subsequent step S220 of the liver and kidney echo contrast measurement method 200 according to the embodiment of the present application is described.

In step S220, the position of the liver tissue region and the position of the kidney tissue region are respectively acquired based on the ultrasound image, and ultrasound waves are respectively transmitted to the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region and ultrasound echoes are received based on the acquired positions of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region.

In the embodiment of the present application, instead of performing the comparison of the liver and kidney echoes based on the brightness difference of the liver and kidney portions in the ultrasound images of the liver and kidney portions obtained in step S210, the positions of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region are respectively obtained based on the ultrasound images of the liver and kidney portions obtained in step S210 (as shown in fig. 3A, a small white box is the position of the liver tissue region, and a small gray box is the position of the kidney tissue region), then the ultrasound waves are re-emitted based on the obtained positions to obtain the respective ultrasound echoes of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region, and the comparison of the liver and kidney echoes is performed based on the respective ultrasound echoes of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region. Therefore, the respective ultrasonic echoes of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region are not signals processed by the ultrasonic image, so that the different processing of ultrasonic echo signals of various positions by ultrasonic image processing can be avoided, and a more accurate liver and kidney echo comparison result can be obtained. The depth of the first target region and the depth of the second target region may be the same, so that the influence of the depth factor on the ultrasound echo may be further eliminated (for example, the focusing of the ultrasound probe may also cause non-uniformity of acoustic energy at different depths), so as to obtain a more accurate contrast measurement result.

Here, it should be noted that, in an example of the present application, the above-mentioned "performing a contrast of liver and kidney echoes on the basis of respective ultrasound echoes of a liver tissue region and a kidney tissue region" may refer to performing a contrast of liver and kidney echoes by directly using respective ultrasound echoes of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region, where respective ultrasound echo signals of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region are the most original ultrasound echo signals without being processed by any link in the above-mentioned ultrasound image processing process, and thus there is no problem that ultrasound echo signals at respective positions are processed by ultrasound image processing unequally. In another example of the present application, the above-mentioned "performing the comparison of the liver and kidney echoes on the basis of the respective ultrasound echoes of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region" may also refer to performing signal processing different from the aforementioned ultrasound image processing on the respective ultrasound echoes of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region, so as to minimize or avoid occurrence of inequality in processing of the respective ultrasound echoes of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region. Here, "signal processing different from the aforementioned ultrasound image processing is performed on the ultrasound echoes of each of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region" may mean that the processing performed on the ultrasound echoes of each of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region includes only a part of the aforementioned ultrasound image processing (the processing of the part may be the same as or different from that of the aforementioned ultrasound image processing, and will be described in detail in the following embodiments).

With continued reference to fig. 2, a subsequent step S230 of the method 200 for measuring a hepatic and renal echo contrast according to an embodiment of the present application is described.

In step S230, the ultrasonic echo of the liver tissue region and the ultrasonic echo of the kidney tissue region are respectively signal-processed to obtain a first ultrasonic signal and a second ultrasonic signal, where the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal are both ultrasonic signals with amplitude information and phase information.

As described above, in the embodiment of the present application, the liver and kidney echo comparison may be performed on the basis of the original ultrasound echo signals of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region, so that the inequality of the ultrasound echo signal processing at each position in the ultrasound image processing may be avoided, and a more accurate liver and kidney echo comparison result may be obtained. Preferably, the ultrasound echo of the liver tissue region and the ultrasound echo of the kidney tissue region may each be subjected to signal processing, which is different from the aforementioned existing ultrasound image processing, for example, the signal processing may include at least one of: gain compensation, analog-to-digital conversion, beam synthesis, quadrature demodulation, baseband signal strength determination, and gray scale logarithmic compression (these processes have been described previously and are not described herein). That is, the signal processing at least does not include the last gray level conversion step in the ultrasound image processing. In other words, the signal output by any one of the preceding gray scale conversion stages (e.g., the RF data, IQ data, or even the data after the analog-to-digital conversion preceding the RF data) can be used as the basis for the liver-kidney echo comparison. The data generally have amplitude information and phase information, so that abundant information is provided for liver and kidney echo comparison, and compared with liver and kidney echo comparison based on an ultrasonic image (namely, gray data after gray conversion is used for comparison), the abundant information contained in the data can obtain an accurate liver and kidney echo comparison result. In this embodiment, the processing of the respective ultrasound echoes of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region includes only a part of the aforementioned ultrasound image processing, and as described above, the processing of this part may be the same as or different from that of the aforementioned ultrasound image processing, and the same case will not be described again, and different cases will be described below.

In embodiments of the present application, the aforementioned signal processing may include gain compensation, which may include gain compensation of analog signals and/or gain compensation of digital signals. The effect of gain compensation may be the final superposition of multiple gain compensation stages. Gain compensation may occur before, after, or both before and after the beamforming stage. Since the ultrasonic signal attenuation of the region with larger depth is larger, and the energy is weaker, different times of gain compensation are often used for different depths in the foregoing conventional ultrasonic image processing process, and generally, the gain is larger for deeper depth (as shown in fig. 4A) to ensure the uniformity of the image brightness in the depth direction. However, in one example of the present application, the same compensation parameter may be used for different depths, that is, the gain compensation parameter is fixed in the depth direction (as shown in fig. 4B), which may more truly reflect the attenuation of the ultrasound echo through different tissues at different depths, and thus more truly reflect the echo difference of liver and kidney tissues. In another example of the present application, the gain compensation may include a first gain compensation in which a compensation parameter increases with increasing depth (as shown in fig. 4C) and a second gain compensation in which a compensation parameter decreases with increasing depth (as shown in fig. 4D). That is to say, the first gain compensation and the second gain compensation adopt compensation parameters with opposite change trends, which is equivalent to that the same compensation parameters are adopted for different depths, so that the echo difference of liver and kidney tissues is reflected more truly. The mode of gain compensation first and gain inverse compensation second has the advantages that a certain gain compensation link can be shared with the conventional ultrasonic image processing, and hardware resources are saved.

In an embodiment of the present application, the aforementioned signal processing may include quadrature demodulation. The purpose of the orthogonal demodulation link is to extract the frequency shift of the effective frequency components of the ultrasonic echo signals to be near the zero frequency of a baseband, so that the sampling rate of data can be further reduced, and the subsequent calculation of the signal amplitude is facilitated. Since the attenuation of the high-frequency part is faster, in order to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the deep image as much as possible, the conventional ultrasonic image processing often uses different demodulation center frequencies at different depths, and generally, the greater the depth, the lower the demodulation frequency. However, in an example of the present application, the same demodulation frequency may be used for different depths, so that the loss degree of different frequency components of the ultrasonic echo in a certain frequency range can be reflected more completely and accurately, and the energy difference of the ultrasonic echo can be calculated more accurately. Generally, the higher the tissue fat level, the faster the ultrasound decays with frequency. Therefore, the information related to the frequency distribution of the ultrasonic echo is extracted, and the fat degree of the tissue can be reflected. In another example of the present application, the magnitude of the demodulation frequency used for quadrature demodulation may also slightly change with the magnitude of the depth, for example, the magnitude of the demodulation frequency changes with the magnitude of the depth by an amount smaller than a certain set threshold. Such a slightly changed demodulation frequency can still accurately reflect the degree of loss of different frequency components of the ultrasonic echo within a certain frequency range, and is also helpful for more accurately calculating the energy difference of the ultrasonic echo.

In the foregoing embodiment, the signal processing performed on each of the ultrasonic echo of the liver tissue region and the ultrasonic echo of the kidney tissue region is described, and based on such signal processing, processed ultrasonic echo signals of each of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region can be obtained, and for distinguishing from each other, they are referred to as a first ultrasonic signal and a second ultrasonic signal, respectively. Wherein the first ultrasonic signal is a processed ultrasonic echo of the liver tissue region and the second ultrasonic signal is a processed ultrasonic echo of the kidney tissue region. The processed ultrasonic echo signals (i.e. the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal) are ultrasonic signals with amplitude information and phase information, and can be used for comparing the liver and kidney echoes.

With continued reference to fig. 2, a subsequent step S240 of the liver and kidney echo contrast measurement method 200 according to an embodiment of the present application is described.

In step S240, an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject is determined based on the first ultrasound signal and the second ultrasound signal.

As mentioned above, the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal used as the basis for the comparison of the hepatic and renal echoes are both signals with amplitude information and phase information. Thus, a liver-kidney echo comparison result (i.e. an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject) of the target subject may be obtained by comparing the first ultrasound signal and the second ultrasound signal. In one example, the echo difference between the liver tissue and the kidney tissue of the target object may be determined by determining a ratio and/or a difference between a parameter of the first ultrasound signal and a parameter of the second ultrasound signal at a certain target region. Wherein the parameter may comprise, for example, amplitude, frequency, phase, etc., for example, the ratio and/or difference between the parameter of the first ultrasound signal and the parameter of the second ultrasound signal comprises at least one of: the amplitude ratio, the amplitude distribution standard deviation ratio, the center frequency ratio, the frequency distribution standard deviation ratio, the amplitude difference, the center frequency difference and the amplitude distribution standard deviation difference of the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal.

When the comparison between the parameters of the first ultrasonic signal and the parameters of the second ultrasonic signal in a certain target region is calculated, the mean value or the median value of each local point data in the target region can be taken as the representative result thereof to participate in the comparison calculation. That is, the value of any parameter of the first ultrasonic signal is a mean value or a median value of the parameter of the plurality of signals included in the first ultrasonic signal, and the value of any parameter of the second ultrasonic signal is a mean value or a median value of the parameter of the plurality of signals included in the second ultrasonic signal. For example, taking amplitude calculation as an example, the average value or the median value of the amplitudes of each local point data in the target area can be taken as the representative result thereof to participate in the comparison calculation. Furthermore, it is also possible to extract image distribution-related parameters based on the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal, respectively, and compare the image distribution-related parameters. Wherein the image distribution related parameters comprise histogram information and/or gray scale travel statistical information. Generally, compared with the conventional method that data after gray level conversion (namely data of an ultrasonic image) is used as a liver and kidney echo comparison basis, the data of any link before the gray level conversion is used as the liver and kidney echo comparison basis, not only amplitude comparison can be carried out, but also the comparison of richer information such as frequency spectrum, phase and the like can be carried out, so that a more accurate liver and kidney echo comparison result can be obtained.

Finally, after obtaining the echo difference between the liver tissue and the kidney tissue of the target object, the echo difference result may be displayed on the ultrasound image obtained in step S210. Illustratively, the parameter compared with the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal and the numerical result obtained by the comparison can be directly displayed on the ultrasonic image (as shown in fig. 3B), so that the user can visually know the specific data of the liver and kidney echo comparison result. For example, respective values of the same parameter of the first ultrasound signal and the second ultrasound signal may also be displayed in respective tissue regions as image attributes, with different values being displayed with different image attributes. The image attribute may be a color, a line thickness, or any other suitable image attribute. For example, a value of a parameter of the first ultrasound signal is displayed on the ultrasound image in a first color, and a value of the parameter of the second ultrasound signal is displayed on the ultrasound image in a second color, where different colors may correspond to different values. Or, the value of a certain parameter of the first ultrasonic signal is displayed on the ultrasonic image by a first line, the value of the parameter of the second ultrasonic signal is displayed on the ultrasonic image by a second line, and the thickness of each of the first line and the second line represents the value size of the parameter of the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal. Based on the display, the user can intuitively know the size relation of the liver and kidney echo contrast. In other examples, the echo difference between the liver tissue and the kidney tissue of the target subject may also be displayed in any other suitable manner, which is not limited by this application.

The method 200 for measuring the liver and kidney echo contrast according to the embodiment of the present application is exemplarily shown above, and the method uses the original ultrasound echo signals with amplitude and phase information in the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region as the basis for determining the liver and kidney echo contrast, so as to avoid the influence of the ultrasound image processing process on the liver and kidney echo contrast result, and thus can obtain a more accurate liver and kidney echo contrast result.

Next, a measurement method 500 of liver and kidney echo contrast according to another embodiment of the present application will be described with reference to fig. 5. As shown in fig. 5, the method 500 for measuring the echo contrast of liver and kidney may include the following steps:

in step S510, an ultrasound echo of a liver tissue region and an ultrasound echo of a kidney tissue region are acquired.

In the embodiment of the application, the comparison of the liver and kidney echoes is not implemented based on the brightness difference of the liver and kidney parts in the ultrasound images of the liver and kidney parts, but the respective ultrasound echoes of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region are respectively obtained, and the comparison of the liver and kidney echoes is performed on the basis of the respective ultrasound echoes of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region. In this way, the respective ultrasound echoes of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region are not signals processed by the ultrasound image processing, so that the processing inequality of the ultrasound echo signals at each position by the ultrasound image processing can be avoided, and thus a more accurate liver and kidney echo comparison result can be obtained, as described above, there are many ways to acquire the ultrasound echo of the liver tissue region of the target object and the ultrasound echo of the kidney tissue region of the target object, including but not limited to any one of the following acquisition manners:

in one example, the manner of acquiring ultrasound echoes of a liver tissue region may be: the method comprises the steps of obtaining a first ultrasonic image comprising a section of liver tissue, determining a first target area where the liver tissue is located based on the first ultrasonic image, transmitting ultrasonic waves to the first target area and receiving echoes to obtain ultrasonic echoes of the liver tissue area. Similarly, the manner in which the ultrasound echoes of the renal tissue region are acquired may be: acquiring a second ultrasonic image comprising a section of the kidney tissue, determining a second target area where the kidney tissue is located based on the second ultrasonic image, transmitting ultrasonic waves to the second target area and receiving echoes to obtain ultrasonic echoes of the kidney tissue area. In this example, a target region in which the liver and/or kidney is located is determined based on an ultrasound image including a section of liver and/or kidney tissue, respectively, and ultrasound transmission and echo reception are performed on the target region, so that transmission and reception are faster and the amount of data is smaller. The method for acquiring the liver and kidney ultrasonic echoes has high accuracy. The first ultrasound image and the second ultrasound image may be the same ultrasound image, that is, the liver tissue section and the kidney tissue section are on the same ultrasound image at the same time, and at this time, the target region where the liver and the kidney are located may be determined based on the ultrasound images, and ultrasound transmission and echo reception may be performed on the target region. Furthermore, the first ultrasound image and the second ultrasound image may be separate ultrasound images, in which case the determination of the target region, the ultrasound transmission and the echo reception may be performed separately. Further, the determined depths of the first target region and the second target region where the liver and kidney tissues are respectively located can be consistent, so that the influence of the depth factor on the ultrasonic echo can be further eliminated, as described above.

In another example, the manner of acquiring ultrasound echoes of a liver tissue region may be: ultrasonic waves are transmitted to the liver tissue and ultrasonic echoes are received as ultrasonic echoes of the liver tissue region. Similarly, the manner in which the ultrasound echoes of the renal tissue region are acquired may be: ultrasonic waves are transmitted to the kidney tissue and ultrasonic echoes are received as ultrasonic echoes of the kidney tissue region. In this example, it is not necessary to determine a target region of the liver and kidney tissues based on the ultrasound images of the liver and kidney tissues and to transmit the ultrasonic waves and receive the echoes, but the ultrasonic waves are directly transmitted to the liver and kidney tissues, respectively, to acquire the ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney tissue regions, respectively. The method for acquiring the ultrasonic echo of the liver and kidney is quicker.

In another example, the manner of acquiring ultrasound echoes of a liver tissue region may be: the method comprises the steps of transmitting ultrasonic waves to a liver and kidney part of a target object and receiving ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney part, obtaining ultrasonic images of the liver and kidney part based on the ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney part, determining the position of a liver tissue region and the position of a kidney tissue region from the ultrasonic images of the liver and kidney part, and determining the ultrasonic echoes of the liver tissue region and the ultrasonic echoes of the kidney tissue region from the ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney part based on the position of the liver tissue region and the position of the kidney tissue region. Or, ultrasonic waves are transmitted to the liver and kidney parts of the target object, the ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney parts are received, and the ultrasonic echoes of the liver tissue region and the ultrasonic echoes of the kidney tissue region are directly extracted from the ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney parts, so that the ultrasonic transmitting and receiving times are effectively reduced.

In step S520, each of the ultrasound echo of the liver tissue region and the ultrasound echo of the kidney tissue region is signal processed to obtain a first ultrasound signal and a second ultrasound signal, respectively, the signal processing including at least one of: gain compensation, analog-to-digital conversion, beam synthesis, quadrature demodulation, baseband signal intensity calculation and gray level logarithmic compression, wherein the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal are not subjected to gray level conversion processing.

Similar to step S230 of the method 200 described with reference to fig. 2, the ultrasound echo of the liver tissue region and the ultrasound echo of the kidney tissue region are each subjected to signal processing in step S520, which is different from the aforementioned conventional ultrasound image processing and does not include at least the final grayscale conversion segment. For example, the signal processing may include at least one of: gain compensation, analog-to-digital conversion, beam synthesis, quadrature demodulation, baseband signal strength determination, and gray scale logarithmic compression (these processes have been described previously and are not described herein). After the signal processing, a processed ultrasonic echo in a liver tissue region, namely a first ultrasonic signal, and a processed ultrasonic echo in a kidney tissue region, namely a second ultrasonic signal, can be obtained respectively. Therefore, in this embodiment, the signal output by any one of the preceding gray-scale conversion stages (for example, the aforementioned RF data, IQ data, or even the analog-to-digital converted data preceding the RF data) is still used as the basis for the liver-kidney echo comparison. The data generally have amplitude information and phase information, so that abundant information is provided for liver and kidney echo comparison, and compared with liver and kidney echo comparison based on an ultrasonic image (namely, gray data after gray conversion is used for comparison), the abundant information contained in the data can obtain an accurate liver and kidney echo comparison result.

Furthermore, similar to the signal processing described in the method 200 described above with reference to fig. 2, the signal processing described in step S520 may include gain compensation, which may use the same compensation parameters for different depths so as to more truly reflect the attenuation of the ultrasound echo through different tissues at different depths, and thus more truly reflect the echo difference of liver and kidney tissues. Alternatively, the gain compensation may include a first gain compensation and a second gain compensation, wherein the first gain compensation uses a compensation parameter that increases with increasing depth, and the second gain compensation uses a compensation parameter that decreases with increasing depth. That is to say, the first gain compensation and the second gain compensation adopt compensation parameters with opposite change trends, which is equivalent to that the same compensation parameters are adopted for different depths, so that the echo difference of liver and kidney tissues is reflected more truly. The mode of gain compensation first and gain inverse compensation second has the advantages that a certain gain compensation link can be shared with the conventional ultrasonic image processing, and hardware resources are saved.

Furthermore, similar to the signal processing described in the method 200 described above with reference to fig. 2, the signal processing described in step S520 may include quadrature demodulation, which may use the same demodulation frequency for different depths, so that the loss degree of different frequency components of the ultrasound echo in a certain frequency range may be reflected more completely and accurately, and also the energy difference of the ultrasound echo may be calculated more accurately. Or the size of the demodulation frequency adopted by the orthogonal demodulation can also slightly change along with the size of the depth, and the slightly changed demodulation frequency can still accurately reflect the loss degree of different frequency components of the ultrasonic echo in a certain frequency range and is also helpful for calculating the energy difference of the ultrasonic echo more accurately.

In step S530, an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject is determined based on the first ultrasound signal and the second ultrasound signal.

Similar to step S240 of the method 200 described above with reference to fig. 2, a liver-kidney echo comparison result of the target subject (i.e., an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject) may be obtained by comparing the first ultrasound signal and the second ultrasound signal in step S530. In one example, the echo difference between the liver tissue and the kidney tissue of the target object may be determined by determining a ratio and/or a difference between a parameter of the first ultrasound signal and a parameter of the second ultrasound signal at a certain target region. Wherein the parameter may comprise, for example, amplitude, frequency, phase, etc., for example, the ratio and/or difference between the parameter of the first ultrasound signal and the parameter of the second ultrasound signal comprises at least one of: the amplitude ratio, the amplitude distribution standard deviation ratio, the center frequency ratio, the frequency distribution standard deviation ratio, the amplitude difference, the center frequency difference and the amplitude distribution standard deviation difference of the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal. When the comparison between the parameters of the first ultrasonic signal and the parameters of the second ultrasonic signal in a certain target region is calculated, the mean value or the median value of each local point data in the target region can be taken as the representative result thereof to participate in the comparison calculation. For example, taking amplitude calculation as an example, the average value or the median value of the amplitudes of each local point data in the target area can be taken as the representative result thereof to participate in the comparison calculation. Furthermore, it is also possible to extract image distribution-related parameters based on the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal, respectively, and compare the image distribution-related parameters. Wherein the image distribution related parameters comprise histogram information and/or gray scale travel statistical information. Generally, compared with the conventional method that data after gray level conversion (namely data of an ultrasonic image) is used as a liver and kidney echo comparison basis, the data of any link before the gray level conversion is used as the liver and kidney echo comparison basis, not only amplitude comparison can be carried out, but also the comparison of richer information such as frequency spectrum, phase and the like can be carried out, so that a more accurate liver and kidney echo comparison result can be obtained.

The above exemplarily illustrates a measurement method 500 for comparing liver and kidney echoes according to another embodiment of the present application, in which after respective ultrasonic echoes of liver and kidney tissue regions are obtained, at least one of gain compensation, analog-to-digital conversion, beam synthesis, quadrature demodulation, baseband signal strength calculation and gray scale logarithmic compression is used to process the ultrasonic echoes, and the processed ultrasonic echo signals including rich information such as amplitude and phase are used as a basis for determining the comparison of liver and kidney echoes, so that a more accurate comparison result of liver and kidney echoes can be obtained.

Next, a measurement method 600 of liver and kidney echo contrast according to still another embodiment of the present application will be described with reference to fig. 6. As shown in fig. 6, the method 600 for measuring the echo contrast of liver and kidney may include the following steps:

in step S610, an ultrasonic wave is transmitted to the liver and kidney portion of the target object and the ultrasonic echo of the liver and kidney portion is received, and an ultrasonic image is processed based on the ultrasonic echo of the liver and kidney portion to obtain an ultrasonic image.

Step S610 in the measurement method 600 for comparing hepatic and renal echoes according to still another embodiment of the present application described with reference to fig. 6 is similar to step S210 in the measurement method 200 for comparing hepatic and renal echoes according to an embodiment of the present application described with reference to fig. 2, and therefore, for brevity, no further description is provided herein.

In step S620, an ultrasound echo of the liver tissue region and an ultrasound echo of the kidney tissue region are acquired based on the ultrasound echoes of the liver and kidney regions.

In the embodiment of the present application, the ultrasound echoes of the liver and kidney parts received in step S610 may be stored as two paths, one path is processed with the ultrasound image (as described in step S610) to obtain the ultrasound image, and the other path is used for the subsequent measurement of the liver and kidney echo contrast. Specifically, the ultrasound echo of the liver tissue region and the ultrasound echo of the kidney tissue region may be acquired from the ultrasound echoes of the liver and kidney regions, so as to be used as a basis for the comparison of the liver and kidney echoes of the target object. The advantage of storing the ultrasound echoes of the liver and kidney parts as two separate processes is that a synchronized ultrasound image can be obtained while performing a contrast measurement of the liver and kidney echoes.

In step S630, the ultrasound echo of the liver tissue region and the ultrasound echo of the kidney tissue region are each subjected to signal processing to obtain a first ultrasound signal and a second ultrasound signal, respectively, the signal processing including at least one of: gain compensation, analog-to-digital conversion, beam synthesis, quadrature demodulation, baseband signal intensity calculation and gray level logarithmic compression, wherein the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal are not subjected to gray level conversion processing.

Step S630 in the measurement method 600 for comparing the hepatic echo and the renal echo according to still another embodiment of the present application described with reference to fig. 6 is similar to step S520 in the measurement method 500 for comparing the hepatic echo and the renal echo according to an embodiment of the present application described with reference to fig. 5, and therefore, for brevity, no further description is provided here.

In step S640, an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject is determined based on the first ultrasound signal and the second ultrasound signal.

Step S640 in the measurement method 600 for comparing hepatic and renal echoes according to still another embodiment of the present application described with reference to fig. 6 is similar to step S530 in the measurement method 500 for comparing hepatic and renal echoes according to an embodiment of the present application described with reference to fig. 5, and therefore, for brevity, no further description is provided herein.

In step S650, the ultrasound image and the echo difference are displayed.

In the embodiment of the present application, as described above, the result of the echo difference value can be directly displayed on the ultrasound image, so that the user can intuitively know the data of the specific liver and kidney echo comparison result. Or, the respective values of the parameters compared by the echo difference may be displayed in the respective tissue regions by using image attributes, and the different values are displayed by using different image attributes (where the image attributes may be colors, line thicknesses, or any other suitable image attributes), and based on such display, the user may intuitively know the size relationship of the liver and kidney echo contrast.

The method 600 for measuring the liver and kidney echo contrast according to another embodiment of the present application is exemplarily shown above, and stores the ultrasound echoes of the liver and kidney part into two paths, one path performs ultrasound image processing to obtain an ultrasound image, and the other path is used for subsequent measurement of the liver and kidney echo contrast, so that a synchronized ultrasound image can be obtained for display while performing the liver and kidney echo contrast measurement, and since at least one of gain compensation, analog-to-digital conversion, beam synthesis, quadrature demodulation, baseband signal intensity calculation and gray level logarithmic compression is also used to process the ultrasound echoes, and the processed ultrasound echo signals including rich information such as amplitude and phase are used as a basis for judging the liver and kidney echo contrast, a more accurate liver and kidney echo contrast result can be obtained.

Next, a measurement method 700 of liver and kidney echo contrast according to still another embodiment of the present application will be described with reference to fig. 7. As shown in fig. 7, the method 700 for measuring the echo contrast of liver and kidney may include the following steps:

in step S710, ultrasonic waves are transmitted to the liver and kidney of the target object and ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney are received.

In step S720, an ultrasound image processing is performed based on the ultrasound echoes of the liver and kidney to obtain an ultrasound image, where the ultrasound image processing at least includes gain compensation, and the gain compensation uses the same compensation parameter for different depths, or the gain compensation includes a first gain compensation and a second gain compensation, where the compensation parameter used by the first gain compensation increases with the increase of the depth, and the compensation parameter used by the second gain compensation decreases with the increase of the depth.

In step S730, an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target object is determined based on the ultrasound image.

In the liver and kidney echo contrast measurement method 700 according to yet another embodiment of the present application, the echo difference between the liver tissue and the kidney tissue of the target subject is still determined based on the ultrasound image. However, it is changed that the ultrasound image processing for obtaining the ultrasound image is different from the conventional ultrasound image processing. Specifically, different from the conventional ultrasound image processing in which the gain compensation parameter is larger as the depth is larger, the gain compensation included in the ultrasound image processing in the method 700 adopts the same compensation parameter for different depths, or performs gain compensation (the compensation parameter is increased along with the increase of the depth) and then gain compensation (the compensation parameter is decreased along with the increase of the depth), so that the attenuation condition of the ultrasound echo passing through different tissues at different depths can be reflected more truly, and the echo difference of the liver and kidney tissues can be reflected more truly.

Next, a measurement method 800 of liver and kidney echo contrast according to still another embodiment of the present application will be described with reference to fig. 8. As shown in fig. 8, the method 800 for measuring the echo contrast of liver and kidney may include the following steps:

in step S810, ultrasonic waves are transmitted to the liver and kidney portions of the target object and ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney portions are received.

In step S820, an ultrasound image processing is performed based on the ultrasound echoes of the liver and kidney to obtain an ultrasound image, where the ultrasound image processing at least includes orthogonal demodulation that uses the same demodulation frequency for different depths, or the size of the demodulation frequency used for the orthogonal demodulation changes with the size of the depth by an amount smaller than a threshold.

In step S830, an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target object is determined based on the ultrasound image.

In the measurement method 800 for liver and kidney echo contrast according to still another embodiment of the present application, the echo difference between the liver tissue and the kidney tissue of the target subject is determined still based on the ultrasound image. However, it is changed that the ultrasound image processing for obtaining the ultrasound image is different from the conventional ultrasound image processing. Specifically, unlike the conventional ultrasound image processing in which the demodulation frequency is lower as the depth is larger, in the method 800, the orthogonal demodulation included in the ultrasound image processing adopts the same demodulation frequency for different depths, or the size of the demodulation frequency slightly changes with the size of the depth (the amount of change of the size of the demodulation frequency with the size of the depth is smaller than a certain set threshold), so that the loss degree of different frequency components of the ultrasound echo in a certain frequency range can be reflected more completely and accurately, and the energy difference of the ultrasound echo can also be calculated more accurately.

The above exemplarily shows the measurement methods 700 and 800 of the hepatorenal echo contrast according to the embodiments of the present application, and the methods 700 and 800 still determine the echo difference between the liver tissue and the kidney tissue of the target object based on the ultrasound image. However, it is changed that the processing of the ultrasound image to obtain the ultrasound image is different from the conventional processing of the ultrasound image, and the different processing enables the echo difference of the liver and kidney tissues to be calculated more truly and accurately. It should be understood that although the methods 700 and 800 are described separately, in actual practice, the two may also be used in combination. In addition, other links in the conventional ultrasonic image processing can be changed, so that the echo difference of the liver and kidney tissues can be calculated more truly and accurately by the processed ultrasonic image.

The above exemplarily shows the measurement methods 200, 500, 600, 700, and 800 for liver and kidney echo comparison according to the embodiments of the present application, and generally, these methods use the original ultrasound echo signals with amplitude and phase information of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region as the basis for determining the liver and kidney echo comparison, so as to avoid the influence of the ultrasound image processing process on the liver and kidney echo comparison result, and thus can obtain a more accurate liver and kidney echo comparison result; or still adopt the ultrasonic image as the basis of judging the comparison of the liver and kidney echoes, but adopt certain method to make the ultrasonic image process the processing of the ultrasonic echo signal of each position equal in the course of obtaining the ultrasonic image, thus can obtain the more accurate comparison result of the liver and kidney echoes.

A schematic block diagram of a liver and kidney echo contrast measuring device 900 according to another embodiment of the present application is described below with reference to fig. 9. Fig. 9 shows a schematic block diagram of a measurement device 900 for hepatorenal echo contrast according to an embodiment of the present application. The measurement device 900 for hepatorenal echo contrast includes a memory 910 and a processor 920.

The memory 910 stores a program for implementing the corresponding steps in the measurement methods 200, 500, 600, 700, and 800 for liver and kidney echo contrast according to the embodiments of the present application. The processor 920 is configured to execute a program stored in the memory 910 to perform the corresponding steps of the liver and kidney echo contrast measurement methods 200, 500, 600, 700, and 800 according to the embodiments of the present application.

Further, according to an embodiment of the present application, there is also provided a storage medium on which program instructions are stored, which when executed by a computer or a processor (such as the aforementioned processor 103 or the processor 920) are used for executing the corresponding steps of the liver and kidney echo contrast measurement methods 200, 500, 600, 700 and 800 of the embodiment of the present application. The storage medium may include, for example, a memory card of a smart phone, a storage component of a tablet computer, a hard disk of a personal computer, a Read Only Memory (ROM), an Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory (EPROM), a portable compact disc read only memory (CD-ROM), a USB memory, or any combination of the above storage media. The computer-readable storage medium may be any combination of one or more computer-readable storage media.

In addition, according to the embodiment of the application, a computer program is further provided, and the computer program can be stored on a storage medium in a cloud or a local place. When being executed by a computer or a processor, the computer program is used for executing the corresponding steps of the liver and kidney echo comparison measuring method of the embodiment of the application.

Further, according to an embodiment of the present application, there is also provided a medical system, which may implement the measurement methods 200, 500, 600, 700, and 800 of the liver and kidney echo contrast according to the embodiment of the present application described above. The medical system may include a liver and kidney echo contrast measurement device 900 according to an embodiment of the present application. A person skilled in the art can understand the structure and specific operation of the medical system according to the embodiment of the present application based on the above-described measurement apparatus 900 for liver and kidney echo contrast according to the embodiment of the present application, and details are not described herein for brevity. Illustratively, the medical system may be an ultrasound system.

Based on the above description, the measurement method, the device, the medical system and the storage medium for liver and kidney echo comparison according to the embodiments of the present application use the original ultrasound echo signals with amplitude and phase information in the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region as the basis for determining the liver and kidney echo comparison, so as to avoid the influence of the ultrasound image processing process on the liver and kidney echo comparison result, thereby obtaining a more accurate liver and kidney echo comparison result; or still adopt the ultrasonic image as the basis of judging the comparison of the liver and kidney echoes, but adopt certain method to make the ultrasonic image process the processing of the ultrasonic echo signal of each position equal in the course of obtaining the ultrasonic image, thus can obtain the more accurate comparison result of the liver and kidney echoes.

Although the example embodiments have been described herein with reference to the accompanying drawings, it is to be understood that the above-described example embodiments are merely illustrative and are not intended to limit the scope of the present application thereto. Various changes and modifications may be effected therein by one of ordinary skill in the pertinent art without departing from the scope or spirit of the present application. All such changes and modifications are intended to be included within the scope of the present application as claimed in the appended claims.

Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the various illustrative elements and algorithm steps described in connection with the embodiments disclosed herein may be implemented as electronic hardware or combinations of computer software and electronic hardware. Whether such functionality is implemented as hardware or software depends upon the particular application and design constraints imposed on the implementation. Skilled artisans may implement the described functionality in varying ways for each particular application, but such implementation decisions should not be interpreted as causing a departure from the scope of the present application.

In the several embodiments provided in the present application, it should be understood that the disclosed apparatus and method may be implemented in other ways. For example, the above-described device embodiments are merely illustrative, and for example, the division of the units is only one logical functional division, and other divisions may be realized in practice, for example, a plurality of units or components may be combined or integrated into another device, or some features may be omitted, or not executed.

In the description provided herein, numerous specific details are set forth. However, it is understood that embodiments of the application may be practiced without these specific details. In some instances, well-known methods, structures and techniques have not been shown in detail in order not to obscure an understanding of this description.

Similarly, it should be appreciated that in the description of exemplary embodiments of the present application, various features of the present application are sometimes grouped together in a single embodiment, figure, or description thereof for the purpose of streamlining the application and aiding in the understanding of one or more of the various inventive aspects. However, the method of the present application should not be construed to reflect the intent: this application is intended to cover such departures from the present disclosure as come within known or customary practice in the art to which this invention pertains. Rather, as the following claims reflect, inventive aspects lie in less than all features of a single disclosed embodiment. Thus, the claims following the detailed description are hereby expressly incorporated into this detailed description, with each claim standing on its own as a separate embodiment of this application.

It will be understood by those skilled in the art that all of the features disclosed in this specification (including any accompanying claims, abstract and drawings), and all of the processes or elements of any method or apparatus so disclosed, may be combined in any combination, except combinations where such features are mutually exclusive. Each feature disclosed in this specification (including any accompanying claims, abstract and drawings) may be replaced by alternative features serving the same, equivalent or similar purpose, unless expressly stated otherwise.

Furthermore, those skilled in the art will appreciate that while some embodiments described herein include some features included in other embodiments, rather than other features, combinations of features of different embodiments are meant to be within the scope of the application and form different embodiments. For example, in the claims, any of the claimed embodiments may be used in any combination.

The various component embodiments of the present application may be implemented in hardware, or in software modules running on one or more processors, or in a combination thereof. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that a microprocessor or Digital Signal Processor (DSP) may be used in practice to implement some or all of the functionality of some of the modules according to embodiments of the present application. The present application may also be embodied as apparatus programs (e.g., computer programs and computer program products) for performing a portion or all of the methods described herein. Such programs implementing the present application may be stored on a computer readable medium or may be in the form of one or more signals. Such a signal may be downloaded from an internet website or provided on a carrier signal or in any other form.

It should be noted that the above-mentioned embodiments illustrate rather than limit the application, and that those skilled in the art will be able to design alternative embodiments without departing from the scope of the appended claims. In the claims, any reference signs placed between parentheses shall not be construed as limiting the claim. The application may be implemented by means of hardware comprising several distinct elements, and by means of a suitably programmed computer. In the unit claims enumerating several means, several of these means may be embodied by one and the same item of hardware. The usage of the words first, second and third, etcetera do not indicate any ordering. These words may be interpreted as names.

The above description is only for the specific embodiments of the present application or the description thereof, and the protection scope of the present application is not limited thereto, and any person skilled in the art can easily conceive of the changes or substitutions within the technical scope disclosed in the present application, and shall be covered by the protection scope of the present application. The protection scope of the present application shall be subject to the protection scope of the claims.

Claims (23)

1. A method for measuring the echo contrast of liver and kidney, which is characterized by comprising the following steps:

   transmitting ultrasonic waves to the liver and kidney part of a target object, receiving ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney part, and processing an ultrasonic image based on the ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney part to obtain an ultrasonic image;

   respectively acquiring the position of a liver tissue region and the position of a kidney tissue region based on the ultrasonic image, and respectively transmitting ultrasonic waves to the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region and receiving ultrasonic echoes based on the acquired positions of the liver tissue region and the kidney tissue region;

   respectively processing the ultrasonic echo of the liver tissue region and the ultrasonic echo of the kidney tissue region to respectively obtain a first ultrasonic signal and a second ultrasonic signal, wherein the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal are both ultrasonic signals with amplitude information and phase information; and

   determining an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject based on the first ultrasound signal and the second ultrasound signal.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein the signal processing comprises at least one of: gain compensation, analog-to-digital conversion, beam synthesis, quadrature demodulation, baseband signal intensity calculation and gray level logarithmic compression.
3. The method of claim 2, wherein the signal processing comprises the gain compensation, and wherein the gain compensation employs the same compensation parameters for different depths.
4. The method of claim 2, wherein the signal processing comprises the gain compensation, and wherein the gain compensation comprises a first gain compensation and a second gain compensation, and wherein a compensation parameter used for the first gain compensation increases with increasing depth, and a compensation parameter used for the second gain compensation decreases with increasing depth.
5. The method according to any of claims 2-4, characterized in that the signal processing comprises the quadrature demodulation, which employs the same demodulation frequency for different depths.
6. The method according to any of claims 2-4, wherein the signal processing comprises the quadrature demodulation, wherein a magnitude of a demodulation frequency employed by the quadrature demodulation varies with a magnitude of depth by an amount less than a threshold.
7. The method of any one of claims 1-6, wherein said determining an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject based on the first ultrasound signal and the second ultrasound signal comprises:

   determining a ratio and/or difference between a parameter of the first ultrasound signal and a parameter of the second ultrasound signal as an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject.
8. The method according to claim 7, wherein the ratio and/or difference between the parameter of the first ultrasound signal and the parameter of the second ultrasound signal comprises at least one of:

   the amplitude ratio, the amplitude distribution standard deviation ratio, the center frequency ratio, the frequency distribution standard deviation ratio, the amplitude difference, the center frequency difference and the amplitude distribution standard deviation difference of the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal.
9. The method according to claim 7 or 8, wherein the value of any parameter of the first ultrasonic signal is a mean or median of the parameters of the signals comprised by the first ultrasonic signal, and the value of any parameter of the second ultrasonic signal is a mean or median of the parameters of the signals comprised by the second ultrasonic signal.
10. The method of any one of claims 7-9, wherein the determining an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject based on the first ultrasound signal and the second ultrasound signal, further comprises:

    and extracting image distribution related parameters based on the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal respectively, and comparing the image distribution related parameters.
11. The method according to claim 10, wherein the image distribution related parameters comprise histogram information and/or gray scale trip statistics.
12. The method of any one of claims 1-11, wherein the liver tissue region is a first target region comprising liver tissue and the kidney tissue region is a second target region comprising kidney tissue.
13. The method of claim 12, wherein the first target region and the second target region are the same depth.
14. The method according to any one of claims 1-13, further comprising:

    after determining the echogenic differences between the liver tissue and the kidney tissue of the target subject, displaying echogenic difference results on the ultrasound image.
15. The method of claim 14, wherein said displaying an echogenic discrepancy result on the ultrasound image comprises:

    and directly displaying the compared parameters and the numerical result obtained by comparison on the ultrasonic image.
16. The method of claim 14, wherein said displaying an echogenic discrepancy result on the ultrasound image comprises:

    and displaying respective values of the same parameters of the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal in respective tissue areas by image attributes, wherein different values are displayed by adopting different image attributes.
17. The method of claim 16, wherein the image attribute is a color or a line thickness.
18. A method for measuring the echo contrast of liver and kidney, which is characterized by comprising the following steps:

    acquiring an ultrasonic echo of a liver tissue region and an ultrasonic echo of a kidney tissue region;

    signal processing each of the ultrasound echoes of the liver tissue region and the ultrasound echoes of the kidney tissue region to obtain a first ultrasound signal and a second ultrasound signal, respectively, the signal processing comprising at least one of: gain compensation, analog-to-digital conversion, beam synthesis, quadrature demodulation, baseband signal intensity calculation and gray level logarithmic compression, wherein the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal are not subjected to gray level conversion; and

    determining an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject based on the first ultrasound signal and the second ultrasound signal.
19. A method for measuring the echo contrast of liver and kidney, which is characterized by comprising the following steps:

    transmitting ultrasonic waves to the liver and kidney part of a target object, receiving ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney part, and processing an ultrasonic image based on the ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney part to obtain an ultrasonic image;

    acquiring an ultrasonic echo of a liver tissue region and an ultrasonic echo of a kidney tissue region based on the ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney parts;

    performing signal processing based on the ultrasound echo of the liver tissue region and the ultrasound echo of the kidney tissue region to obtain a first ultrasound signal and a second ultrasound signal, respectively, the signal processing including at least one of: gain compensation, analog-to-digital conversion, beam synthesis, quadrature demodulation, baseband signal intensity calculation and gray level logarithmic compression, wherein the first ultrasonic signal and the second ultrasonic signal are not subjected to gray level conversion;

    determining an echo difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject based on the first ultrasound signal and the second ultrasound signal; and

    displaying the ultrasound image and the echo difference.
20. A method for measuring the echo contrast of liver and kidney, which is characterized by comprising the following steps:

    transmitting ultrasonic waves to the liver and kidney parts of a target object and receiving ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney parts;

    performing ultrasonic image processing based on the ultrasonic echoes of the liver and kidney part to obtain an ultrasonic image, wherein the ultrasonic image processing at least comprises gain compensation and/or orthogonal demodulation, the gain compensation adopts the same compensation parameter for different depths, or the gain compensation comprises first gain compensation and second gain compensation, the compensation parameter adopted by the first gain compensation increases with the increase of the depth, the compensation parameter adopted by the second gain compensation decreases with the increase of the depth, the orthogonal demodulation adopts the same demodulation frequency for different depths, or the amount of change of the demodulation frequency adopted by the orthogonal demodulation along with the change of the depth is smaller than a threshold value; and

    determining an echogenic difference between liver tissue and kidney tissue of the target subject based on the ultrasound image.
21. A measurement device for hepatorenal echo contrast, characterized in that the device comprises a memory and a processor, the memory having stored thereon a computer program for execution by the processor, the computer program, when executed by the processor, performing the measurement method for hepatorenal echo contrast according to any of claims 1-20.
22. A medical system comprising the liver-kidney echo contrast measuring device of claim 21.
23. A storage medium, characterized in that the storage medium has stored thereon a computer program which, when run, performs the method of measuring liver and kidney echo contrast according to any of claims 1-20.

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