CN112932541A - Intravascular three-dimensional imaging device adopting piezoelectric driving scanning - Google Patents

Intravascular three-dimensional imaging device adopting piezoelectric driving scanning Download PDF

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CN112932541A
CN112932541A CN202110111129.XA CN202110111129A CN112932541A CN 112932541 A CN112932541 A CN 112932541A CN 202110111129 A CN202110111129 A CN 202110111129A CN 112932541 A CN112932541 A CN 112932541A
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intravascular
imaging
spiral
stator
imaging device
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吴大伟
王柏权
李晓牛
曹腾
温智益
何丽媛
刘威
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Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics
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    • AHUMAN NECESSITIES
    • A61MEDICAL OR VETERINARY SCIENCE; HYGIENE
    • A61BDIAGNOSIS; SURGERY; IDENTIFICATION
    • A61B8/00Diagnosis using ultrasonic, sonic or infrasonic waves
    • A61B8/08Detecting organic movements or changes, e.g. tumours, cysts, swellings
    • A61B8/0891Detecting organic movements or changes, e.g. tumours, cysts, swellings for diagnosis of blood vessels
    • AHUMAN NECESSITIES
    • A61MEDICAL OR VETERINARY SCIENCE; HYGIENE
    • A61BDIAGNOSIS; SURGERY; IDENTIFICATION
    • A61B8/00Diagnosis using ultrasonic, sonic or infrasonic waves
    • A61B8/42Details of probe positioning or probe attachment to the patient

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Abstract

The invention relates to a piezoelectric driving scanning intravascular three-dimensional imaging device, and belongs to the technical field of intravascular interventional imaging. The device comprises an imaging catheter and a spiral ultrasonic motor, wherein the spiral ultrasonic motor drives the imaging catheter to perform spiral motion; the imaging catheter comprises a miniature ultrasonic probe, a probe base, a moment spring and a metal matching pipe; the spiral ultrasonic motor comprises a plastic shell, a plastic cover, a metal column, a stator, a rotor, a spring and a nut. The driving device is miniaturized and light, can be held by hand and has no electromagnetic interference, and the imaging signal-to-noise ratio of the system is improved.

Description

Intravascular three-dimensional imaging device adopting piezoelectric driving scanning
Technical Field
The invention relates to a piezoelectric driving scanning intravascular three-dimensional imaging device, and belongs to the technical field of intravascular interventional imaging.
Background
Currently, cardiovascular disease is a significant health problem worldwide, with nearly 80% of cardiovascular deaths worldwide occurring in low-to-medium income countries. Given the deaths and overall mortality of cardiovascular diseases, we face a serious public health problem and accurate identification of these diseases is critical to guiding treatment strategies. Intravascular interventional imaging is a key to real-time, tomographic assessment of lumen volume and plaque composition, size and distribution.
The existing intravascular three-dimensional imaging system mainly adopts a mechanical scanning mode, and realizes three-dimensional intravascular imaging by utilizing a proximal end driving device (generally utilizing two electromagnetic motors) to rotate at the proximal end of an imaging catheter (arranged outside a human body) and linearly withdraw the catheter. However, the combination of multiple motors makes the mechanical scanning device bulky, and the electromagnetic motor may generate electromagnetic interference, which reduces the original signal-to-noise ratio of the image. Miniaturization of the drive means of the imaging system can therefore improve clinician operability. In addition, electromagnetic interference caused by a system driving device is avoided, the signal to noise ratio of an original image is improved, and accurate diagnosis of a focus area of an imaging area by a doctor is facilitated. Therefore, the miniaturization, integration and absence of electromagnetic interference of the scanning device are of great importance to the convenience and accuracy of clinical diagnosis.
As a novel driver, the ultrasonic motor has the advantages of compact structure, quick response, high positioning precision, self locking and no electromagnetic interference compared with the traditional electromagnetic motor. Among the ultrasonic motors, the threaded ultrasonic motor can be designed to realize rotation-linear coupled spiral motion by adopting a specific bending vibration mode, and the design stimulates the new insight of the intracavity scanning action. Based on the above advantages, it would be a potential candidate for a driving device in an intravascular imaging system.
In the patent aspect, US6940209B2 discloses a method of applying a screw ultrasonic motor in a three-dimensional displacement translation stage. Four piezoelectric ceramic plates are attached to a hollow metal body, and the whole piezoelectric ceramic plate is used as a stator of the motor. The screw rod is used as the combination of the rotor and the screw caps at the two ends of the stator, when the stator realizes the actuating effect of the hula hoop by utilizing bending vibration, the rotor rotates and simultaneously carries out linear motion due to the existence of the screw thread, and the structure of the rotor is shown as the attached figure 1. However, the motor is only used for linear motion of the translation stage and is not considered for combination with a medical imaging catheter.
In journal terms, shoulde Chang et al first used the screw motor of NEW SCALE corporation to perform medical catheter imaging, as shown in fig. 2 (article: study for 360 ° optical coherence tomography). A threaded motor is integrated at the front end of the imaging catheter, the motor drives a reflector to rotate, light emitted by optical fibers in the catheter is reflected to tissues by the reflector, and finally an optical coherence tomography image is reconstructed. But due to the spiral motion of the motor, the focal distance of light from the reflecting mirror to the sample is changed, which is not favorable for imaging and focusing. They design the screw motor to only make a rotational motion without a linear motion, so that three-dimensional imaging cannot be realized even though the screw ultrasonic motor is applied in imaging.
Other patents and reports on screw motors have been applied to optical conditioning systems or to MRI push pumps, where the motor functions primarily to convert rotational motion into linear motion, driving system components linearly. They do not consider the effect of coupling rotation to linear motion and therefore such helical motion would be well suited for applications in three-dimensional intravascular imaging.
To sum up, the intravascular ultrasound imaging catheter is compact in structure and beneficial to miniaturization by combining with the spiral ultrasound motor, and has the characteristics of avoiding electromagnetic interference and the like, so that the intravascular ultrasound imaging catheter can bring the advantages of high imaging precision, low system cost, high signal-to-noise ratio imaging and the like for the intravascular ultrasound imaging field.
Disclosure of Invention
The driving device of the system is miniaturized and light-weighted, can be held by hand and has no electromagnetic interference, the imaging signal-to-noise ratio of the system is improved, and the problems that a driving device of the traditional intravascular imaging system is large in structure, heavy and has electromagnetic interference can be solved.
The invention adopts the following technical scheme for solving the technical problems:
a piezoelectric driving scanning intravascular three-dimensional imaging device comprises an imaging catheter and a spiral ultrasonic motor, wherein the spiral ultrasonic motor drives the imaging catheter to perform spiral motion; the imaging catheter comprises a miniature ultrasonic probe, a probe base, a torque spring and a metal matching pipe, wherein the miniature ultrasonic probe is arranged on the probe base, the probe base is inserted into the front end of the torque spring, and the rear end of the torque spring is inserted into the metal matching pipe; the spiral ultrasonic motor comprises a plastic shell, a plastic cover, metal columns, a stator, a rotor, springs and nuts, wherein the stator and the rotor are arranged in the plastic shell after being assembled through threads, the nuts and the springs are coaxially sleeved on the rotor and are close to the stator along with axial rotation of the nuts, the plastic cover and the plastic shell are coaxially connected through the four metal columns, and a square groove is formed in the middle of the plastic cover and used for limiting the nuts.
The stator consists of four piezoelectric ceramic plates and a hollow chamfer rectangular metal body.
The probe base adopts a stainless steel tube with the diameter of 0.7mm, the inner diameter of 0.5mm and the length of 3 mm.
The metal matching pipe has an inner diameter of 1mm and an outer diameter of 1.2 mm.
The spiral ultrasonic motor has the outer diameter width of 12mm, the length of 95mm and the weight of 21 g.
The invention has the following beneficial effects:
1) the spiral ultrasonic motor is applied to the three-dimensional imaging technology in the blood vessel for the first time, and new indexes are provided for the structural parameters of the motor aiming at the imaging requirements, such as: the rotor pitch needs to be less than the lateral resolution of the imaging probe.
2) The spiral motor is compact in design structure, and skillfully applies constant pre-pressure on the stator and the rotor, so that the output torque of the motor is ensured.
3) Compared with the conventional intravascular imaging system, the driving device of the intravascular imaging system is miniaturized, light and handheld.
Drawings
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a lead screw ultrasonic motor from NEW SCALE technologies, USA.
FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of Chang et al implementing catheter rotational scanning in conjunction with a NEW SCALE motor.
Figure 3 is a diagram of an intravascular imaging device design.
Fig. 4 is a schematic view of the distal end of an imaging catheter.
Fig. 5 is an exploded view of the proximal end of the imaging catheter.
Fig. 6 is an exploded view of an ultrasonic motor.
Fig. 7 is a diagram of a helical motor driven intravascular ultrasound three-dimensional imaging system.
Fig. 8(a) is an original ultrasonic image of an iron plate acquired under the driving of an ultrasonic motor; fig. 8(b) is an original ultrasound image of the iron plate acquired under the driving of the electromagnetic motor.
Fig. 9 is a schematic diagram of an isolated blood vessel three-dimensional imaging experiment.
Figure 10 is a cross-sectional view of ultrasound imaging of ex vivo porcine cardiovascular.
Fig. 11 is a three-dimensional ultrasound image of ex vivo porcine cardiovascular.
Detailed Description
The invention is described in further detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings.
The invention relates to a handheld intravascular three-dimensional imaging device driven by a spiral piezoelectric mechanism, which is combined with an ultrasonic imaging platform, a control system and the like to form a complete intravascular ultrasonic three-dimensional imaging system and can be applied to clinical intravascular ultrasonic three-dimensional imaging.
Of primary importance to the present invention is the design of the intravascular imaging device. It includes an imaging catheter and a helical ultrasound motor, as shown in figure 3.
The imaging catheter comprises a miniature ultrasonic probe, a probe base, a moment spring (outer diameter: 0.9mm), a metal matching pipe (inner diameter: 1mm, outer diameter: 1.2mm), the total length of the imaging catheter is 150cm, and the maximum outer diameter entering the blood vessel is 0.9 mm. As shown in figure 4, the distal end of the imaging catheter adopts a stainless steel tube with the diameter of 0.7mm, the inner diameter of 0.5mm and the length of 3mm as a probe base. One end of the stainless steel tube is processed into a trapezoid, so that the ultrasonic probe can be conveniently placed on the base, and the ultrasonic probe and the base are bonded by using ultraviolet curing glue. After the bonding is finished, a high-frequency signal wire of the ultrasonic probe penetrates through the torque spring, and the base is inserted into the torque spring for matching. At the proximal end of the catheter, the torque spring is inserted into the metal matching tubing, which is then inserted into the threaded rotor, as shown in FIG. 5. The matching steel pipe has the function of ensuring that the torque spring and the threaded rotor are coaxial, and the rotor coaxially drives the imaging guide pipe to rotate.
As shown in figure 6, the spiral ultrasonic motor comprises a plastic shell, a metal column, a stator, a rotor, a spring, a nut and a plastic cover, wherein the outer diameter of the motor is 12mm wide, 95mm long and 21g heavy, and compared with the traditional driving device, the spiral ultrasonic motor is compact in structure and light in weight. Firstly, the motor stator consists of four piezoelectric ceramic sheets and a hollow chamfer rectangular metal body, and the piezoelectric sheets are tightly attached to the periphery of the metal body by epoxy glue. It is noted that the stator metal body is threaded with a pitch of 0.35mm and the rotor is also threaded with a pitch of 0.35 mm. The pitch design is based on that the pitch size must be smaller than the lateral resolution of the imaging probe in the catheter, otherwise, in the helical scanning process, the problem of missing three-dimensional spatial information exists. Then the stator is arranged in the plastic shell under the coaxial condition, and the plastic shell can play an insulating role, so that the handheld operation is convenient. The nut and the spring are coaxially sleeved on the rotor, the spring is respectively contacted with the end face of the stator metal body and the end face of the nut, and pre-pressure of the motor is generated by extrusion of the nut and the end face of the stator. The driving principle of the ultrasonic motor is that the stator generates movement of an elliptical track based on an inverse piezoelectric effect, and the rotor is driven by utilizing a friction principle, so the pre-pressure between the stator and the rotor can influence the output performance of the motor. The rotor and the stator of the motor are connected by screw threads, and the extruded spring generates a counterforce to act between the screw threads of the stator and the rotor. When the nut rotates forwards and backwards in the axial direction, the pre-pressure is changed at the same time, the larger the spring is extruded and deformed, the larger the pre-pressure of the motor is, and the larger the output torque is. If the position of the nut and the position of the stator are not guaranteed to be relatively static, the magnitude of the pre-pressure can change all the time, and the stable output performance of the motor is not facilitated. Therefore, the square groove is formed in the middle of the plastic cover and used for limiting the nut, and stable pre-pressure can be applied when the position of the nut is fixed, so that the motor can stably output torque. And finally, the plastic cover is coaxially connected with the plastic shell by four metal columns, so that the motor is integrally assembled.
A system diagram of the present invention is shown in fig. 7, which shows the general setup of an imaging system, including mechanical scanning, ultrasound signal transmission, and image reconstruction.
The main principle of operation of the system is that for the mechanical scanning section, a signal generator is used to generate two alternating signals of identical frequency (21.48kHz), identical amplitude (1Vp-p) and 90 ° phase difference. The two alternating current signals are amplified to 80Vp-p by the power amplifier, and the spiral ultrasonic motor is excited and drives the imaging catheter to do spiral scanning movement; for the signal transmission portion, the ultrasound imaging system (Verasonics Vantage 64LE) sends an electrical signal (a sinusoidal pulse signal with a frequency of 37MHz and a pulse repetition frequency of 2500Hz) to the ultrasound probe at the distal end of the imaging catheter upon receiving a synchronized trigger from the signal generator. Finally, the ultrasonic probe also receives the returned ultrasonic signal; for the image reconstruction part, the ultrasound platform digitizes the ultrasound signals, which are ultimately stored in a personal computer. The acquired signals are band-pass filtered (bandwidth: 10-50MHz) using matlab software, then Hilbert transformed, and then converted into polar coordinates for display. Finally, a series of two-dimensional ultrasound sectional images are obtained, and all the images are combined along the scanning withdrawing direction, so that a three-dimensional image in the cavity can be reconstructed.
Fig. 8 shows the ultrasonic imaging result of the metallic iron block obtained by the imaging catheter under different motor drives. The experimental process is that the imaging guide pipe is still to carry out ultrasonic detection on the iron block at the position of 3.8mm under the condition that the motor works. FIGS. 8(a), (b) are ultrasonic images obtained by driving an ultrasonic motor and an electromagnetic motor, respectively, in which FIG. 8(b) is a background of the phenomenon of regular slash noise (frequency range: 1MHz-30 MHz) in addition to snowflake-like noise. This is because the electromagnetic motor is equipped with a switching power supply, and it is easier to introduce high-frequency electromagnetic interference during transmission of high-frequency signals (above MHz).
The ultrasound images obtained in both cases were subjected to signal-to-noise analysis. Taking the mean value of the ultrasonic signals of the iron block as the final signal value meansTaking the standard deviation of the background noise and averaging to obtain the final noise value meannThen the SNR is calculated as follows:
Figure BDA0002918917860000081
finally, the signal-to-noise ratio of fig. 8(a) is 80.28dB, and the signal-to-noise ratio of fig. 8(b) is 48.69dB, so that the result can be obtained, under the same condition, the signal-to-noise ratio of the original image obtained under the driving of the ultrasonic motor is higher, and the ultrasonic motor has a huge application prospect in the field of medical imaging.
Fig. 9 is a schematic diagram of an isolated blood vessel three-dimensional imaging experiment. The imaging catheter is placed in the isolated blood vessel, and the spiral motor drives the catheter to scan the isolated blood vessel in a spiral mode. Wherein the guide wire is used for guiding the intravascular advance of the imaging catheter and plays a role in imaging positioning.
Fig. 10 is an ultrasonic imaging sectional view of an isolated blood vessel, and when the imaging catheter is driven by the spiral motor to perform spiral scanning, ultrasonic information of one cross section of the blood vessel can be obtained every time the imaging catheter rotates one circle. From fig. 10, we can distinguish the layered structure of the intima, media and adventitia of the blood vessel according to the intensity of the signal. Wherein the ultrasound information of the guide wire is also recorded near the intima inside the vessel.
Fig. 11 is a three-dimensional ultrasound image of a blood vessel. The image is synthesized by 10 ultrasonic imaging sections along the axial direction of the blood vessel, the actual corresponding distance of each imaging section is 0.35mm (which is less than the transverse resolution of the system is 0.36mm), so the length of the linear scanning in the three-dimensional blood vessel is 3.5 mm. The results of fig. 11 demonstrate the ability of the system to provide accurate three-dimensional imaging within the blood vessel.

Claims (5)

1. A piezoelectric driving scanning intravascular three-dimensional imaging device is characterized by comprising an imaging catheter and a spiral ultrasonic motor, wherein the spiral ultrasonic motor drives the imaging catheter to perform spiral motion; the imaging catheter comprises a miniature ultrasonic probe, a probe base, a torque spring and a metal matching pipe, wherein the miniature ultrasonic probe is arranged on the probe base, the probe base is inserted into the front end of the torque spring, and the rear end of the torque spring is inserted into the metal matching pipe; the spiral ultrasonic motor comprises a plastic shell, a plastic cover, metal columns, a stator, a rotor, springs and nuts, wherein the stator and the rotor are arranged in the plastic shell after being assembled through threads, the nuts and the springs are coaxially sleeved on the rotor and are close to the stator along with axial rotation of the nuts, the plastic cover and the plastic shell are coaxially connected through the four metal columns, and a square groove is formed in the middle of the plastic cover and used for limiting the nuts.
2. The piezoelectric driven scanning intravascular three-dimensional imaging device according to claim 1, wherein the stator is composed of four piezoelectric ceramic plates and a hollow chamfered rectangular metal body.
3. The piezoelectric driven scanning intravascular three-dimensional imaging device according to claim 1, wherein the probe base is a stainless steel tube with a diameter of 0.7mm, an inner diameter of 0.5mm and a length of 3 mm.
4. The piezoelectric driven scanning intravascular three-dimensional imaging device according to claim 1, wherein the metal matching tube has an inner diameter of 1mm and an outer diameter of 1.2 mm.
5. The piezoelectric driven scanning intravascular three-dimensional imaging device according to claim 1, wherein the spiral ultrasonic motor has an outer diameter of 12mm in width, 95mm in length and 21g in weight.
CN202110111129.XA 2021-01-27 2021-01-27 Intravascular three-dimensional imaging device adopting piezoelectric driving scanning Pending CN112932541A (en)

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Citations (3)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
CN1306336A (en) * 2001-02-28 2001-08-01 清华大学 Bending-vibration ultrasonic small electric machine based on piezoelectric column and electrode combination exciation method
CN2879526Y (en) * 2005-08-26 2007-03-14 清华大学 Polyhedron piezoelectric pole or piezoelectric tube ultrasonic micro motor
CN101026343A (en) * 2007-03-28 2007-08-29 哈尔滨工业大学 Multi travelling wave bending-rotation ultrasonic motor stator and ultrasonic motor using same

Patent Citations (3)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
CN1306336A (en) * 2001-02-28 2001-08-01 清华大学 Bending-vibration ultrasonic small electric machine based on piezoelectric column and electrode combination exciation method
CN2879526Y (en) * 2005-08-26 2007-03-14 清华大学 Polyhedron piezoelectric pole or piezoelectric tube ultrasonic micro motor
CN101026343A (en) * 2007-03-28 2007-08-29 哈尔滨工业大学 Multi travelling wave bending-rotation ultrasonic motor stator and ultrasonic motor using same

Non-Patent Citations (1)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Title
BOQUAN WANG等: "A Miniature Rotary-linear Ultrasonic motor for Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS) Imaging", 《2020 IEEE INTERNATIONAL ULTRASONICS SYMPOSIUM (IUS)》, 17 November 2020 (2020-11-17), pages 1 - 4 *

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