JPS63115547A - Tomographic image display apparatus - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Abstract] This bulletin contains application data before electronic filing, so abstract data is not recorded.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION Field of Industrial Application The present invention is a tomography system that transmits and receives ultrasonic waves to and from inside a living body, and measures and displays changes over time in the acoustic characteristic information of the living body contained in the waves reflected from the inside of the living body. The present invention relates to an image display device.

2. Description of the Related Art An ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus is known as a method for obtaining information inside a living body by transmitting and receiving ultrasonic waves. The mainstream of these ultrasound diagnostic devices is one that uses a reflection echo type, in which ultrasonic waves are transmitted into the living body and information about the inside of the living body is obtained from waves reflected within the living body.

This reflection echo type collects in-vivo information two-dimensionally from the reflected echo intensity from an interface with a difference in acoustic impedance in the living body, that is, the amplitude value and the propagation time of the ultrasonic wave, and displays it as a tomographic image. However, in recent years, there has been an increasing demand for the ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus that determines the shape of living tissue as described above to obtain information not only about the shape of living tissue but also its quality.

Such information regarding the quality inside the living body can be obtained, for example, by measuring the magnitude of ultrasonic attenuation, the speed of sound, etc. inside the living body. There is also a growing desire to obtain information on the quality of these in vivo changes over time. For example, it is clinically important to know changes in ultrasound characteristics in in vivo tissues upon drug administration. Therefore, for example, if it is possible to determine the temporal change in ultrasonic attenuation in tissues within a living body, it will be possible to obtain information regarding the effects of drug administration, etc. on tissues within a living body, which is extremely physiologically significant.

In order to accurately measure changes in the quality of in-vivo tissues over several hours or longer, such as when a drug is administered, it is necessary to determine the relative position of the site from which the reflected echo is obtained, that is, the sample site, and the in-vivo tissue. It is necessary to match before and after a long time. The reason for this is that in vivo ultrasound attenuation varies greatly depending on the tissue; for example, muscle tissue has a value about twice that of liver tissue, and as a result of organ movement due to breathing etc. It is conceivable that the positional relationship shifts and the value of ultrasound attenuation within the sample site changes.

Therefore, in order to obtain temporal changes in tissue quality in vivo,
It is necessary to display and confirm the relative positional relationship between the sample site and the tissue on the tomographic plane.

Hereinafter, a conventional tomographic image display device that allows confirmation of a sample site will be described with reference to FIG. 3. In FIG. 3, 31 is a subject, 32 is an ultrasound probe, and 3
3 is a pulse driver for driving the ultrasonic probe 32; 34;
3 is a receiver that amplifies the received signal from the ultrasonic probe 32 and processes the signal; 35 is a scan converter that scans and converts the force of the receiver 340; and 36 is a display unit that displays the output of the scan converter 36. be.

Next, the operation of the above conventional example will be explained.

First, a driving pulse sent out from the pulse driver 33 is applied to the ultrasound probe 32, and the ultrasound probe 32 generates an ultrasound pulse. The generated ultrasonic pulse
1, it is scattered one after another according to the acoustic quality of the tissue, and some of it travels backwards along the propagation path, that is, the acoustic scanning line, and reaches the ultrasound probe 32, where it is converted into a received signal. converted.

The ultrasonic probe 32 is based on, for example, a linear electronic scanning method. Further, the acoustic scanning line is sequentially translated in parallel every time an ultrasonic pulse is generated to form a rectangular tomographic plane A, and a point C on the acoustic scanning line B in the tomographic plane A is taken as a sample site. The received signal is then amplified and detected in the receiver 34.

Furthermore, by performing signal processing such as Fourier analysis on the received signal corresponding to the sample region C, the ultrasonic probe 3
It is possible to examine what kind of attenuation is caused by the living tissue between sample site C and sample site C. The detection output of the receiver 34 is written into the memory of the scan converter 35, and an image on the tomographic plane is formed. The scan converter 36 stores information on the tomographic plane A at a certain time, and displays the information on the tomographic plane A at a certain time on the display section 36, which is made up of a CRT monitor, etc., in a playback mode. It is assumed that the area R has a function of displaying in real time mode.

With such a configuration, if a tomographic image at a certain time and its sample site C are displayed in the area of the display unit 36, the tomographic image after an arbitrary period of time is displayed in the area B, and the movement of the organ can be controlled. It is possible to confirm on the display unit 36 a shift in the relative positional relationship between the sample site C and the tissue when there is a difference in the relative position. Therefore, it is also possible to correct the relative positional relationship between the ultrasound probe 32 and the subject 310 so that this deviation is eliminated. By correcting the relative positional relationship in this manner, it becomes meaningful to compare the received signals at the sample site C before and after a long period of time has elapsed.

In the above description, the sample site C is one point within the tomographic plane, but the entire area within the tomographic plane A may be scanned with the sample site C.

In this case, by making the area of the display section 36 coincide with the general tomographic image everywhere, it is also possible to obtain the temporal changes in all the information regarding the acoustic quality within the tomographic plane A.

Problems to be Solved by the Invention However, in one or more conventional configurations, a high degree of skill is required to confirm the shift of the tomographic plane A on the display unit 36.

Therefore, the present invention solves the above-mentioned problems in the prior art, and easily detects the deviation in the relative positional relationship between the tomographic plane and the tissue in the living body before and after a long period of time without requiring any skill. It is an object of the present invention to provide a tomographic image display device that enables confirmation.

Means for solving the problems and the technical means of the present invention for solving the above problems are an ultrasonic probe that transmits and receives ultrasonic waves to and from a subject, and this ultrasonic probe. The apparatus is equipped with means for displaying a tomographic image in reproduction mode and a tomographic image in real-time mode multiplexed on the same part of the display section based on the received signal.

For production The effects of the above technical means are as follows.

That is, since tomographic images before and after a long period of time are displayed multiplexed, a deviation in the relative positional relationship between the tomographic plane and the subject can be confirmed very easily.

Embodiments Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a tomographic image display device according to a first embodiment of the present invention.

In FIG. 1, 10 is a subject, 11 is an ultrasound probe,
12 is a pulse driver for driving the ultrasonic probe 11; 13;
1 is a preamplifier that amplifies the received signal from the ultrasonic probe 11; 14 is a detector that detects the output of the preamplifier 13;
6 is an A/D that converts the output of the detector 14 into a digital signal.
converter; 16.17 is an image memory that stores the output of the A/D converter 16; 18 is a scan conversion control unit that generates write addresses and read addresses for the image memory 16.17;
9 is an external memory connected to the image memory 16; 20 is a multiplexer that multiplexes the outputs of the image memories 16 and 17;
1 is a D/ that converts the output of the multiplexer 2o into an analog signal.
A converter, 22 is a display unit that displays the output of the D/A converter 21, 23 is a signal processing unit that processes the output of the preamplifier 13, and 24 is an image memory that stores the output of the signal processing unit 23. The output of image memory 24 is applied to multiplexer 20.

The operation of the above configuration will be described below.

First, the pulse driver 12 sends out the signal. A drive pulse is applied to the ultrasound probe 11. The ultrasonic probe 11 generates ultrasonic pulses, and the generated ultrasonic pulses strike the object 1.
0, it is scattered one after another according to the acoustic quality of the tissue, and a part of it travels backwards on the propagation path, that is, the acoustic scanning line, reaches the ultrasound probe 11, and becomes the received signal. converted.

The ultrasonic probe 11 is based on, for example, a linear electronic scanning method. Further, it is assumed that the acoustic scanning line sequentially moves in parallel each time an ultrasonic pulse is generated to form a rectangular tomographic plane A. The received signal is amplified in a preamplifier 13,
After being detected by the wave detector 14, it is converted into a digital signal by the A/D converter 15 and added to the image memory 16.1. After that, it is assumed that the image memory 16 operates in the reproduction mode and the contents of the memory are not rewritten.

On the other hand, the image memory 17 operates in real-time mode, and the information regarding the tomographic plane is rewritten one after another in response to the movement of the acoustic scanning line. The scan conversion control unit 18 controls writing to the image memory 16, 17 or generates a write address.

The scan conversion control unit 1 reads out the contents of the image memories 16 and 17 at the same timing. The read data of the image memory 16 is Ml.

The read data of the image memory 17 is assumed to be M2. When the output data of the multiplexer 20 is Y, the following various data operations are performed in the multiplexer 2o.

Yl-Ml (1
)Y←(Ml +M2)/2...
...(2)Y-M2
(3) Simple operations such as those described above can be easily realized by using a logic operation IC or the like. The output of the multiplexer 2° is converted into an analog signal by a D/A converter 21 and displayed on a display section 22. In the case of data manipulation shown in equation (2) above, data M
A tomographic image in the reproduction mode before a long period of time corresponding to data M2 and a tomographic image in real time mode after a long period of time corresponding to data M2 are displayed multiplexed on the same part of the display unit 22.

With the above-described configuration, it is possible to confirm a shift in the relative positional relationship between the ultrasound probe 11 and the subject 10 before and after a long period of time has elapsed, and to easily correct this shift while looking at the display unit 22.

Next, the operation of the signal processing section 23 will be explained.

The signal processing unit 23 performs signal processing such as Fourier analysis on a portion of the output of the preamplifier 13 corresponding to an arbitrary sample portion at the timing of writing data into the image memory 16, and holds the result. Next, after a long period of time has elapsed, after confirming on the display unit 22 that there is little positional deviation between the tomographic image in the reproduction mode of the image memory 1θ and the tomographic image in the real-time mode of the image memory 17, the output of the preamplifier 13 is changed again. Signal processing is performed on the portion corresponding to the sample site, this result is compared with the signal processing result held above, and the comparison result is written into the image memory 24. An example of comparison may be the rate of change of the damping coefficient. Read data M3 from the image memory 24 is applied to the multiplexer 20 and displayed on the display section 22. The displayed region at that time may be multiplexed on the tomographic image. External memory 19
holds the contents of the image memory 16 and also allows the contents to be transferred to the image memory 16 conversely. By preparing such an external memory 19, even if the contents of the image memory 16 are lost, the contents of the external memory 19 can be transferred to the image memory 16, thereby making it possible to display multiple tomographic images. The external memory 19 may be, for example, a magnetic disk memory device.

As is clear from the above description, according to this embodiment, by displaying a tomographic image in reproduction mode and a tomographic image in real-time mode multiplexed on the same part of the display unit, ultrasonic probes can be detected before and after a long period of time. Discrepancies in the relative positional relationship between the child and the subject can be easily confirmed or corrected, and even slight changes in the acoustic properties of the tissue can be accurately determined.

Note that in the above description, an example was shown in which the average value of the tomographic image in the reproduction mode and the tomographic image in the real-time mode is displayed, but the weighting may be performed by averaging. This can be realized by performing the calculation as shown in the following equation instead of the above equation (2).

Y'-X-Ml+y-M2
・・・・・・(4) (However, y, + y=1
) Furthermore, the gradation of each tomographic image may be different. Further, different color information may be added to each tomographic image.

For example, for a tomographic image in playback mode, the black and white shading information may be converted into red shading information, and the tomographic image in real time mode may be displayed in a multiplex manner while remaining black and white.

Alternatively, various image processing may be performed on the tomographic images, for example, processing such as contour enhancement may be performed on one of the tomographic images, and then multiple display may be performed.

Next, a second embodiment of the present invention will be described.

FIG. 2 shows a tomographic image display device according to a second embodiment of the present invention, and is a block diagram of the vicinity of a multiplexer.

2, the configuration of the multiplexer 20 is different from the configuration of the first embodiment shown in FIG. The reason is that the display is time-division multiplexed.

The operation of the above configuration will be described below.

At a certain time, data written in the image memory 16 is read out from the image memory 1 etc. in a playback mode, and is displayed on the display section 22 via the data selector 210. In the time division mode, the switching control section 211 automatically switches and selects the output data of the image memory 16 or the image memory 17 in synchronization with the scan conversion control section 18. As the type of synchronization timing, for example, every frame of an image, or every field when an image is displayed in an interlaced manner can be considered.

With the configuration described above, the relative positional relationship between the ultrasound probe and the subject before and after a long period of time can be checked, and this deviation can be easily corrected while viewing the display section 22.

Effects of the Invention As is clear from the above description, according to the present invention, since the tomographic image in the reproduction mode and the tomographic image in the real-time mode are displayed in multiple ways on the same part of the display section, It is possible to easily confirm or correct discrepancies in the relative positional relationship between the ultrasound probe and the subject in the front and rear directions, and even slight changes in the acoustic properties of tissue can be accurately determined. big.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a tomographic image display device in a first embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a tomographic image display device in a second embodiment of the present invention, a block diagram around a multiplexer, The figure is a block diagram of a conventional tomographic image display device. 1o... Subject, 11... Ultrasonic probe, 16.1
7... Image memory, 20... Multiplexer, 22...
Display section.

Claims (4)

[Claims] (1) An ultrasonic probe that transmits and receives ultrasonic waves to and from the subject, and based on the received signals of this ultrasonic probe, displays tomographic images in playback mode and tomographic images in real-time mode on the same display. A tomographic image display device characterized by comprising means for displaying multiple parts of a body part. (2) The tomographic image display device according to claim 1, which automatically displays a tomographic image in reproduction mode and a tomographic image in real-time mode in a time-division manner. (3) The tomographic image display device according to claim 1, wherein the tomographic images in the reproduction mode and the tomographic images in the real-time mode have different display gradations. (4) The tomographic image display device according to claim 1, wherein the tomographic images in the reproduction mode and the tomographic images in the real-time mode have different hues.