JPH01126953A - Ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To easily compare a plurality of images and to perform accurate diagnosis, by simultaneously displaying a plurality of the images different in a living body tissue acoustic characteristic on the display regions spatially or timewise divided of a display picture. CONSTITUTION:An ultrasonic wave is emitted from a probe 10 by the transmitting signal of a transmitting-receiving circuit 11 and the reflected wave thereof is received by the probe 10 to be converted to an electric signal. The electric signal is amplified by the transmitting-receiving circuit 11 and the same signal simultaneously becomes the input signals of image regeneration circuits 20, 21, 22. The signals subjected to reconstitution processing as a plurality of image signals are simultaneously converted to digital signals by a plurality of A/D converters 12 to become the inputs of a DSC 13. The DSC 13 writes a plurality of the data in the specified place of an image display memory 14 according to an image display method. For example, when an ultrasonic tomographic image is displayed on a region 2' and an attenuated reflected image is displayed on a region 2'', the addresses of the image display memory corresponding to the respective right-hand and left-hand regions of a display apparatus are indicated and image data are written in the respective addresses.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to an ultrasonic diagnostic device, and in particular, when an ultrasonic wave propagates inside a living body, it is modulated and a single signal with different acoustic scale characteristics is generated. The present invention relates to an ultrasonic diagnostic device suitable for converting this into a plurality of images and displaying the plurality of images.

[Prior art]

Conventionally, ultrasonic waves are transmitted and the reception time of the reflected waves is measured based on the distance.
Ultrasonic diagnostic equipment that converts the intensity of a received signal into luminance and reproduces anatomical structures inside a living body has been commercialized. In addition, a device that reproduces the attenuated reflection image of ultrasound by changing the frequency change of the received signal and the brightness based on the receiving time of the ultrasound reflected wave from the distance was developed by the Japan Society of Ultrasonics in Medicine (Kaiho, 44th Research Presentation Conference). Published in Paper 44-C-11 (Ultrasound Medical Image Processing Systems). However, the acoustic characteristics of individual biological tissues (ultrasonic tomography equipment that reflects sound reflection intensity, ultrasound attenuation imaging equipment that reflects the attenuation rate depending on the sound frequency, and ultrasound attenuation imaging equipment that reflects the intra-tissue velocity of sound) are different from the same signal. Although it is possible to reproduce ultrasound images compatible with ultrasonic sonic imaging devices, there has been no device that can simultaneously display multiple images with different acoustic characteristics of living tissues in real time.

Furthermore, in order to widen the diagnostic area with conventional devices, there are examples in which the screen is divided into a plurality of sections for imaging. However, it has not been possible to simultaneously display and compare multiple images with different acoustic characteristics of living tissues.

[Problem that the invention seeks to solve]

In the conventional device described above, when displaying a plurality of images with different acoustic characteristics of living tissue, such as when comparing an ultrasound tomographic image and an attenuation reflection image, only one image is displayed.
Since no consideration has been given to comparing both images, there has been an inconvenient problem in that it is not possible to identify the diagnostic site when comparing images containing information on different acoustic characteristics of living tissues. This is because an attenuated reflection image is different from a conventional tomographic image and does not necessarily have anatomical features, so it is difficult to identify the diagnostic site (organ A) by displaying only the attenuation reflection image.

The object of the present invention is to provide biological tissue recognition sound r! The object of the present invention is to simultaneously display a plurality of images reflecting information of different I characteristics in real time, facilitate comparison of the plurality of images, and enable accurate diagnosis.

[Means for solving problems]

The above purpose is to capture multiple images with different acoustic characteristics of living tissues.
This can be accomplished by spatially dividing the display area of the display screen and simultaneously displaying a plurality of images, or by temporally dividing the display screen and displaying a plurality of images. Figure 1 (,)
is an example in which the display area is spatially divided into 2' and 2'' and multiple images are displayed on one display device. Note that it is also possible to display one image on each of multiple display devices; A plurality of images may be displayed on the display device.Also.

FIG. 1(b) is an example in which one display area is temporally divided and a tomographic image and an attenuation reflection image are alternately displayed after a certain period of time. Furthermore, the display area of the display screen may be divided spatially, and at the same time, the display area may be divided temporally to display a plurality of images. For example, in Fig. 1(a), 2' is a tomographic image and an attenuation reflection image that are temporally divided and displayed alternately;
The sound velocity reflection image is displayed.

[Effect]

In order to simultaneously display a plurality of images having different acoustic characteristics of living tissues, it is possible to consider a method of dividing the screen spatially or dividing the screen temporally and displaying the images.

As shown in Figure 2, the method of spatially dividing the screen is to A/D convert a plurality of image signals obtained from a plurality of image reproduction circuits using a plurality of analog-to-digital (A/D) converters. Then, the digital scan converter (DSC) inputs data and data into a specific location in the image display memory determined for each image, and sequentially reads them out from the image display memory.

By displaying on a display device, a plurality of images are displayed simultaneously and in real time. In addition, the method of dividing the screen into 1-hour periods involves selecting image data to be input into the 1-image display memory using a selection switch.

The images may be switched and displayed at regular intervals.

Therefore, it is possible to compare relatively the same location in each image, and accurate diagnosis can be made using information on different acoustic characteristics of living tissues.

〔Example〕

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to FIG. The ultrasonic wave is emitted from the probe 10 by a transmission signal from the transmitter/receiver circuit 11, and its reflected wave is received by the probe 10 and converted into an electrical signal. The electrical signal is amplified by the transmitting/receiving circuit 11, and the same signal simultaneously becomes an input signal to the image reproducing circuits 20, 21, and 22.

Ultrasonic tomographic image reproduction circuit (conventional ultrasound diagnostic equipment) 20
Now, the intensity of one reflected wave is converted into brightness using the propagation time of the ultrasound as the distance, and the image is reproduced.

The ultrasonic attenuation reflection image reproducing circuit 21 converts the propagation time of the ultrasonic wave into distance and the attenuation rate of the reflected wave into brightness, and reproduces the image. FIG. 3 shows the results of frequency analysis of the received signal of the ultrasonic sensor. This indicates that high frequencies are highly attenuated in the body, and low frequencies are less attenuated. FIG. 4 shows an example of an attenuated reflection image reproduction circuit utilizing this. This method measures the number of times a signal crosses a reference point within a certain period of time. The circuit consists of a comparator 30 and a shift register 3 shown in FIG.
1, read-only memory (ROM) 32 and adder 3
Compiled in 3. The ultrasonic reception signal becomes an input to the comparator 30, and the output of the comparator 30 is either 1 or 0. This output is taken into the shift register 31 at a sampling period higher than the ultrasonic frequency and held for the time necessary for measurement.

The ROM 32 outputs the number of 1 or 0 change points (the number of crosses) of the shift register 31, and the adder 33 measures and outputs the number of times the signal crosses. This is displayed as an ultrasound attenuation reflection image.

The ultrasonic propagation velocity reflected image reproducing circuit 22 converts the propagation time of the ultrasonic waves into distance and the propagation velocity into luminance to reproduce an image (an example of a velocity image reproducing circuit is shown).

The amplified received signals are A/D converted for each sensor, phase matched, and added. At this time, if the sound speed differs from the assumed sound speed, the image will not be in focus, so the sound speed is detected by focusing the image).
-87538).

The signal reproduced as a plurality of image signals has a plurality of A
The signals are simultaneously A/D converted by the /D converter 12 and input to the DSC 13. The DSC 13 writes a plurality of pieces of data to a specified location in the image display memory 14 according to the image display method.For example, the ultrasound tomographic image is placed at 2'' in FIG. , the addresses of the one-image display memory corresponding to each of the right side area and left side area of the display device are specified, and the image data is written to each address of the one display device i! 1 performs digital-to-analog (D/A) conversion on data sequentially read out from the one-image display memory 14 and displays the data.

Images with different acoustic characteristics of living tissues can be displayed by spatially dividing the display area as shown in FIG. 1(a) using the processing circuit as described above, without impairing the real-time nature of ultrasound images. Another example is a method in which image data to be displayed is selected by the selection switch 15 in FIG. 2, and images are switched and displayed at regular intervals. This method is a method of dividing the display time as shown in FIG. 1(b).

In addition, as a method that combines these, Fig. 1 (a)
There is also a method of displaying the ultrasonic tomographic image in the display area 2', and the ultrasonic attenuation reflection image and the ultrasonic propagation velocity image in the display area 2'' in a time-divided manner. However, for example, a tomographic image is displayed as a black and white image, an attenuation reflection image is displayed with blue brightness modulation, and a propagation velocity image is displayed with red brightness modulation, and there is also a display method that is combined with the above display method.

Above, we have described a method for displaying physical events that occur when ultrasound waves propagate through a living body as images.
) as shown in A mode (ultrasonic propagation time and distance
Convert the intensity of the reflected wave to the Attenuation rate scale and propagation velocity scale corresponding to .

ID information (patient name, patient number, imaging date and time, imaging conditions, etc.)
etc. may also be displayed.

〔Effect of the invention〕

A feature of the present invention is that the screen of the display device is divided spatially as shown in FIG. 1(a), or temporally as shown in FIG. 1(b), and multiple The goal is to display images simultaneously and in real time. Therefore, its effect is useful when displaying multiple images of different physical events, for example when comparing a b-mode image and an attenuated reflection image. Since the images can be compared, the diagnosis site can be identified and a more accurate diagnosis than before can be made based on physically different information.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIGS. 1 and 2 are illustrations of one display screen in which the display area is divided according to the embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 3 is a frequency characteristic diagram of an ultrasonic reception signal, and FIG. 4 is an attenuation reflection image reproduction circuit 1
FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating an example. 1... Display device, 2.2', 2''... Display area. 3... A mode display, 4... Attenuation rate display, 5...
Luminance scale of reflection intensity, 6... Luminance scale of attenuation rate, 7... Cursor display, 10... Probe, 11.
・・Transmitter/receiver, 12・A/D conversion W, 13・DSC11
4... Image display memory, 15... Selection switch, 2
0: Ultrasonic tomographic image reproducing circuit, 21: Ultrasonic attenuation rate image reproducing circuit, 22: Ultrasonic propagation velocity image reproducing circuit. Figure 11 B; #* Hataka Odohata Yoshihai 5121

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. An ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus comprising an ultrasonic sensor, a transmitting/receiving circuit that drives the ultrasonic sensor, a processing circuit that converts a received signal into an image, and a display device that displays the image,
A processing circuit that converts the same signal into images with different acoustic characteristics and a display processing circuit that divides multiple images temporally or spatially and displays the images are provided to display multiple images in real time. An ultrasonic diagnostic device characterized by: 2. The ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus according to claim 1, which simultaneously displays in real time an image reflecting the attenuation due to the ultrasonic frequency of ultrasonic waves propagating inside the body and an ultrasonic diagnostic layer image. 3. The ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus according to claim 1, which simultaneously displays in real time an image reflecting the ultrasonic velocity of ultrasonic waves propagating within a living body and an ultrasonic tomographic image.