JP2620946B2 - Ultrasound diagnostic equipment - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus, and in particular, is modulated when an ultrasonic wave propagates through a living body, and becomes one signal having different acoustic characteristics. The present invention relates to an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus suitable for converting into a plurality of images and displaying the plurality of images.

(Prior art)

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, an ultrasonic tomographic apparatus that transmits an ultrasonic wave, converts a reception time of a reflected wave into a distance, converts an intensity of a received signal into luminance, and reproduces an anatomical structure in a living body has been commercialized. In addition, the device that reproduces the attenuation anti-image of the ultrasonic wave by changing the reception time of the ultrasonic reflected wave to the distance and the frequency change of the received signal to the luminance has been developed by the Japanese Society of Ultrasound Medicine (The 44th Research Presentation Lecture Paper 44-C-11 Ultrasound Medical Image Processing System). However, from the same signal, the individual acoustic characteristics of the living tissue (e.g., an ultrasonic tomographic image device that reflects the reflection intensity of sound, an ultrasonic attenuation image device that reflects the attenuation rate due to the frequency of sound, and a supersonic wave that reflects the speed of sound in tissue) However, there is no device that can simultaneously and in real time display a plurality of images having different acoustic characteristics of a living tissue, even if an ultrasonic image corresponding to the sonic image device can be reproduced.

Further, there is an example in which a screen is divided into a plurality of parts and an image is taken in order to widen a diagnosis area in a conventional apparatus. However, it has not been possible to simultaneously display and compare a plurality of images having different biological tissue acoustic characteristics.

[Problems to be solved by the invention]

When displaying a plurality of images having different biological tissue acoustic characteristics, such as when comparing an ultrasonic tomographic image and an attenuated anti-image, for example, the above-described conventional apparatus displays only one image and compares both images. However, there is a problem in that it is not possible to specify a diagnostic part when comparing information having different acoustic characteristics of a living tissue as an image, which is inconvenient. This is because the attenuation image is different from the conventional tomographic image,
Since the image does not always have an anatomical feature, it is difficult to specify a diagnosis site (organ) by displaying only the attenuation anti-image.

The object of the present invention is to simultaneously and in real time display a plurality of images reflecting different information on the biological tissue acoustic characteristics,
An object of the present invention is to facilitate comparison of a plurality of images to enable accurate diagnosis.

[Means for solving the problem]

The above object is to display a plurality of images having different acoustic characteristics of a living body tissue at the same time by spatially dividing a display area of a display screen or to display a plurality of images by temporally dividing a display screen. This is achieved by: FIG. 1A shows an example in which a display area is spatially divided into 2 'and 2 "and a plurality of images are displayed on one display device. One image is displayed on each of the plurality of display devices. May be
A plurality of images may be displayed on a plurality of display devices. Also,
FIG. 1B shows an example in which one display area is temporally divided and a tomographic image and an attenuated anti-image are alternately displayed after a certain time. Further, the display area of the display screen may be spatially divided, and the display area may be temporally divided to display a plurality of images. For example, in FIG. 1 (a), reference numeral 2 'indicates that a tomographic image and an attenuation anti-image are temporally divided and alternately displayed.
In 2 ″, a sound velocity anti-image is displayed.

(Operation)

In order to simultaneously display a plurality of images having different biological tissue acoustic characteristics, a method of spatially dividing the screen or temporally dividing the screen and displaying the divided images can be considered. As shown in FIG. 2, a method of spatially dividing a screen is to convert a plurality of image signals obtained from an image reproduction circuit into an analog-to-digital (A / D) converter. And each image is determined by a digital scan converter (DSC).
Input data to a specific location in the image display memory. Next, by sequentially reading from the image display memory and displaying it on the display device, a plurality of images are displayed simultaneously and in real time. Further, as a method of temporally dividing the screen, image data to be input to the image display memory may be selected by a selection switch, and images may be switched and displayed at regular intervals. Therefore, the same location can be relatively compared in each image, and accurate diagnosis can be performed using information having different acoustic characteristics of the biological tissue.

〔Example〕

Hereinafter, an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIG. Ultrasonic waves are radiated from the probe 10 by a transmitted signal of the transmission / reception circuit 11, and the reflected wave is received by the probe 10 and converted into an electric signal. The electric signal is amplified by the transmission / reception circuit 11, and the same signal is simultaneously input to the image reproduction circuits 20, 21, and 22. In the ultrasonic tomographic image reproducing circuit (conventional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus) 20,
The image is reproduced by converting the propagation time of the ultrasonic wave into the distance and the intensity of the reflected wave into the luminance.

The ultrasonic attenuation / anti-image reproduction circuit 21 converts the propagation time of the ultrasonic wave into the distance and the attenuation rate of the reflected wave into the luminance, and reproduces the image. FIG. 3 shows a result of frequency analysis of a reception signal of the ultrasonic sensor. High frequencies indicate that the attenuation is large in the body, and low frequencies indicate that the attenuation is small. FIG. 4 shows an example of an attenuated anti-video reproduction circuit utilizing this. This is a method of measuring the number of times a signal crosses a reference point within a certain time. The circuit includes a comparator 30, a shift register 31, a read-only memory (ROM) 32, and an adder 33 shown in FIG. The ultrasonic reception signal is input to the comparator 30 and the comparator 30
Is output as 1 or 0. This output is taken into the shift register 31 at a sampling cycle higher than the ultrasonic frequency and holds the time required for measurement. The ROM 32 outputs the number of changes (the number of crossings) of 1 or 0 in the shift register 31, and the adder 33 measures and outputs the number of crossings of the signal. This is displayed as an ultrasonic attenuation anti-image.

The ultrasonic wave propagation speed anti-image reproduction circuit 22 reproduces an image by converting the propagation time of the ultrasonic wave into distance and the propagation speed into luminance (an example of a velocity image reproduction circuit is to convert the amplified received signal to each sensor). A / D conversion and phase adjustment are performed each time, and the image is not focused if the sound speed is different from the assumed sound speed. Therefore, the sound speed is detected by adjusting the image focus. For details, see JP-A-60-232136 and JP-A-59-
149133, 61-87538).

The signals reproduced as a plurality of image signals are
A / D conversion is performed at the same time by the A / D converter 12 and input to the DSC 13. D
SC13 combines multiple data according to the image display method,
The data is written to a designated location in the image display memory 14. For example, when the ultrasonic tomographic image is displayed at 2 'in FIG. 1 (a) and the attenuation anti-image is displayed at 2 ", the address of the image display memory corresponding to each of the right area and the left area of the display device is set. The image data is written to the respective addresses, and the display device 1 converts the data sequentially read from the image display memory 14 into a digital-to-analog (D / A) display.

Images having different biological tissue acoustic characteristics can be displayed by the processing circuit as described above without spatially dividing the display area as shown in FIG. 1A without deteriorating the real-time property of the ultrasonic image. As another embodiment, there is a method in which image data to be displayed is selected by the selection switch 15 in FIG. 2, and the image is switched and displayed at regular intervals. This method is a method of dividing the display time as shown in FIG.
FIG. 1 (a) shows a method of combining them.
In the display area 2 ', an ultrasonic tomographic image is displayed, and in the display area 2 ", an ultrasonic attenuation image and an ultrasonic propagation velocity image are displayed in a time-divided manner. For example, there is a display method in which a tomographic image is displayed as a black-and-white image, an attenuated anti-image is displayed with blue luminance modulation, and a propagation velocity image is displayed with red luminance modulation.

As described above, the method of displaying a physical event that occurs when an ultrasonic wave propagates through a living body as an image has been described. For example, FIG. 1A or FIG. As shown, A mode (conversion of ultrasonic wave propagation time (distance) on the X axis and reflected wave intensity on the Y axis for graphing) display 3, ultrasonic attenuation rate display 4, ultrasonic wave propagation velocity display, etc. Alternatively, information other than images may be displayed at the same time. Also,
The scale of the attenuation rate and the scale of the propagation speed corresponding to the luminance, and the ID information (patient name, patient number, date and time of imaging, imaging conditions, etc.) may also be displayed.

〔The invention's effect〕

The feature of the present invention is that the screen of the display device is spatially divided as shown in FIG. 1A or the screen is temporally divided as shown in FIG. To display the images simultaneously and in real time. Therefore, when displaying a plurality of images having different physical events, for example, when comparing a b-mode image and an attenuated anti-image, the effects of the plurality of different physical events can be simultaneously obtained without impairing the real-time property of both images. Since the images can be compared, a diagnosis site can be specified, and a more accurate diagnosis can be performed based on physically different information than before.

[Brief description of the drawings]

1 and 2 are illustrations of a display screen in which a display area is divided in an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 3 is a frequency characteristic diagram of an ultrasonic reception signal, and FIG. Circuit 1
It is a block diagram showing an example. 1 display device, 2, 2 ′, 2 ″ display area, 3 A-mode display, 4 decay rate display, 5 luminosity scale of reflection intensity, 6 luminosity scale of decay rate, 7 ... cursor display, 10 ... probe, 11 ... transceiver, 12 ... A / D converter, 13 ... DSC, 14 ... image display memory, 15 ... selection switch, 20 ... super An ultrasonic tomographic image reproducing circuit, 21 ... an ultrasonic attenuation rate image reproducing circuit, 22 ... an ultrasonic wave propagation velocity image reproducing circuit.

 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continuation of the front page (72) Inventor Hiroshi Ikeda 1-280 Higashi Koikebo, Kokubunji-shi, Tokyo Inside the Central Research Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd. (56) References JP-A-62-112536 (JP, A) JP-A-62 JP-A-243541 (JP, A) JP-A-57-185839 (JP, A) JP-A-56-11045 (JP, A) JP-A-58-139180 (JP, A) JP-A-62-139633 (JP, A) ) JP-A-56-158645 (JP, A)

Claims (1)

(57) [Claims] An ultrasonic probe, a transmission / reception circuit for transmitting an ultrasonic wave from the ultrasonic probe to an object to be inspected to obtain a received signal, a means for obtaining a tomographic image from the received signal, In the ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus having display means for displaying, the means for obtaining the tomographic image, which is connected in parallel to the transmission / reception circuit and receives the same received signal, and the attenuation of the ultrasonic wave propagating inside the inspection object. Means for obtaining a first image representing information representing the information, means for obtaining a second image representing information representing the velocity of an ultrasonic wave propagating in the inspection object, and the tomographic image, the first and second images Storage means for storing the tomographic image, the first image, and the second image from the storage means, and simultaneously displaying the tomographic images in different areas on the display surface of the display means in real time. Super Wave diagnostic apparatus.