KR100681855B1 - A measuring method for obtaining an ultrasonic image, having improved resolution - Google Patents

Abstract

It is an object of the present invention to provide an ultrasonic measuring method which can accurately know the internal state of an object or an organ to be analyzed by using an ultrasonic measuring device connected to a computer inside or outside thereof. Specifically, the method for measuring the inside of an object using the ultrasonic wave of the present invention, the ultrasonic measuring device capable of emitting and receiving the ultrasonic wave to analyze it, emitting a plurality of ultrasonic scan waves toward the object; Receiving the scan wave when it is reflected inside an object; Analyzing the position and intensity of the received reflected wave, wherein the analyzing by the ultrasonic measuring device comprises: selecting a reference scan wave having the greatest intensity as compared with the adjacent reflected wave among the received reflected waves; Selecting a predetermined number of scan waves on the left and right adjacent to the reference scan wave as an analysis scan wave; Recognizing reflection values at a plurality of predetermined points located inside the object for each of the analysis scan waves; Obtaining an average value which is an average of the reflection values of the predetermined points; Estimating the epidermal position of the object using the average values; To perform, including.

Description

Ultrasonic measurement method to obtain an image of improved resolution {A MEASURING METHOD FOR OBTAINING AN ULTRASONIC IMAGE, HAVING IMPROVED RESOLUTION}

1 is a structural diagram of a conventional ultrasonic measuring apparatus.

Figure 2 is a measurement schematic diagram using a conventional ultrasonic measuring device.

Figure 3 is a schematic diagram showing a problem in the measurement using a conventional ultrasonic measuring device.

4 is a schematic diagram of a long-term epidermal estimation method of a general ultrasound.

5 is a schematic diagram illustrating a case where each scan wave is divided in the present invention.

Fig. 6 is a diagram showing specific points inside an organ to acquire reflected waves with respect to specific scan waves.

7 is a flowchart illustrating how the present invention works.

8 is a schematic view of the side wall surface of the organ estimated using the present invention.

9 is a block diagram of a computer program capable of carrying out the present invention.

The present invention relates to a measuring method using a portable ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus, and more particularly, to a measuring method and a computer program for detecting a side wall surface of an organ inside an object or an internal part of a human body using ultrasonic waves more precisely. .

As is known, techniques for detecting an internal state of an object using ultrasonic waves are largely divided into medical and industrial applications.

However, most of the ultrasonic diagnostic devices used before were mostly bulky and heavy enough to be carried in a cart. However, in the case of medical use, there is a movement to replace such a heavy and large ultrasonic diagnostic device because of the inconvenience, and as a result of this effort, a portable (portable or hand-held) ultrasonic diagnostic device having a volume equivalent to an electric razor Has been developed and widely used in the hospital, such as to determine the state of the fetus or to take an ultrasound picture of the internal state of the human body.

1 is a view showing an example of a portable ultrasound diagnostic apparatus currently being used, Figure 1a is a perspective view thereof, Figure 1b is an internal module configuration diagram inside the window and the body, Figure 1c is an arrow direction with respect to Figure 1b It shows the front view as seen from.

The ultrasonic measuring apparatus of FIG. 1 is largely divided into a measuring unit and a main body. The measuring unit includes a transducer which emits ultrasonic waves and receives the emitted ultrasonic waves when they are reflected from the internal organs of the human body, and a rotating shaft supporting the transducers so as to swing the second rotary motion by a predetermined angle as shown. A transducer support, a second step motor providing swing motion of the transducer, a gear portion for transmitting power between the second step motor and the transducer support, the transducer support gear portion and the second step motor as a whole And a first step motor for rotating the rotary support.

Here, the second step motor transmits the rotational force to the gear unit and the gear unit transmits it to the rotating shaft and the transducer support to swing the transducer back and forth. At the same time, since the first rotational motion is possible by the first step motor, ultrasonic waves are emitted in the form of a cone having the transducer as a vertex as a result of the trial, and measurement is performed.

In FIG. 1C, a switch unit in which a control command is input by a user in addition to the mechanical component, a drive control unit receiving a control command by the switch unit, and controlling the first and second step motors and the transducer, the transformer When the producer receives the reflected ultrasonic waves, a block diagram of electronic component modules including an image processor for generating an image of an object measured using the ultrasonic waves and an image output unit for transmitting the image to an external monitor is shown. .

The image processing unit may be configured in a connected computer device rather than in the portable ultrasound measuring device itself, in which case the image output unit is simply an ultrasonic data output unit. Although not shown, there is also a power supply unit for supplying power to each of these electrical modules. In addition to the method of supplying power from an external power source via a wire, the portable measuring device itself has a built-in battery.

2A schematically illustrates the direction of divergence of ultrasonic waves when the ultrasonic measuring apparatus measures a specific object. After measuring the cross section in the illustrated manner while the transducer is swinging by the second step motor, the second step motor is rotated by the first step motor and then measured again to obtain the overall image data of the required part. Or the best image quality, and then measuring the angle. After the measurement, the image shown in FIG. 2B is obtained.

This conventional ultrasonic measuring device has the following disadvantages despite its convenience. That is, when the device is to measure the appearance and size of the organ A among the organs A and B of the human body in close contact with each other, as shown in FIG. Due to the large deviation from 90 degrees, the boundary is not obtained correctly.

In more detail, in order to obtain an image of organ A using ultrasound, the angle of incidence of the ultrasonic wave incident on the central portion of organ A and the angle of incidence of the ultrasonic wave incident on the side wall surface of organ A are different depending on the position. Occurs. As a result, the magnitude of the reflected wave reflected at the side wall surface is considerably reduced.

In particular, when the size of the ultrasonic reflected wave of the portion adjacent to one side of the organ A does not differ significantly from the size of the reflected wave reflected inside the organ A, it is difficult to accurately detect the side wall surface of the organ A in the system. This situation becomes even more serious when long-term volume is an important metric, such as incontinence.

In addition, in addition to such a problem, the conventional ultrasonic measuring device is not easy to obtain an ultrasound picture having a high resolution so as to easily distinguish the interface of the object as a whole.

It is an object of the present invention to provide an ultrasonic measuring method which can accurately know the internal state of an object or an organ to be analyzed by using an ultrasonic measuring device connected to a computer inside or outside thereof.

According to the present invention, it is possible to measure accuracy in obtaining a volume of an organ or a component for a specific device in a human body or an object that is not visible to the human eye, even when the size of the ultrasonic reflection of a tissue or component adjacent thereto is similar. An object of the present invention is to provide an ultrasonic measuring method capable of detecting a side wall surface.

It is another object of the present invention to provide a method for accurately measuring the volume of the organs to be analyzed.

The present invention provides an operating method and structure of an ultrasonic measuring computer program or software capable of precisely knowing an internal state of an object or an organ to be analyzed by driving an ultrasonic measuring device connected to a computer internally or externally. Another purpose.

Method for measuring the inside of an object using the ultrasonic wave of the present invention for achieving the above object, the ultrasonic measuring device capable of emitting and receiving the ultrasonic wave to analyze it, emits a plurality of ultrasonic scan waves toward the object Doing; Receiving the scan wave when it is reflected inside an object; Analyzing the position and intensity of the received reflected wave;

The analyzing by the ultrasonic measuring apparatus may include selecting a reference scan wave having the greatest intensity as compared with the adjacent reflected wave among the received reflected waves; Selecting a predetermined number of scan waves on the left and right adjacent to the reference scan wave as an analysis scan wave; Recognizing reflection values at a plurality of predetermined points located inside the object for each of the analysis scan waves; Obtaining an average value which is an average of the reflection values of the predetermined points; Estimating the epidermal position of the object using the average values; To perform, including.

In particular, the step of estimating the skin position estimates that the skin is on the path of the scan wave having the largest value among the average values, and the shape may be estimated together with the position.

The ultrasound measuring apparatus may further include an image generating module, and the image generating module may further include generating an image of the skin of the object based on the estimated position and shape of the skin. .

The object may be an object included in a human body, an animal body, and an inside of a machine, and in particular, may be a bladder of a person whose volume before and after urination is an important measurement index.

Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

A general ultrasonic measuring device including the device of the present invention distinguishes the epidermis of an organ on the principle as shown in FIG. 4. That is, when one scan wave of the ultrasonic scanning for the entire organ is described as shown in FIG. 4A, the scan wave is reflected at each point from point A to point H and the reflected ultrasonic waves are positioned by reception time. When the respective intensities are measured separately, for example, an intensity (I) graph compared to a distance (d) as schematically shown in FIG. 4B is obtained.

For reference, in the present invention, the scan wave refers to an ultrasonic wave emitted for analysis, and among these waves, a wave that hits an object and is reflected is specifically called a reflected wave.

The graph shows that there are long-term walls at the reflection points of the reflected wave B and the reflected wave G, which are reflected in a relatively dense medium.

In this way, all the reflected waves for one ultrasonic scan are divided by distance and intensity, and the image processing unit converts them into images, and then the position of the transducer is swinged by a predetermined angle by the second step motor as described above. When the image is obtained and connected through the process, the above-mentioned ultrasound picture is obtained as a whole.

In this process, as shown in FIG. 5, the reflected waves 6 and 7 that reach the part of the side wall surface of the organ are irregular and inaccurate as described above due to the decrease in the magnitude of the reflection value due to the ultrasonic incidence angle. For reference, the front wall or the rear wall of the organ is also measured in this area.

FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram of the above-described ultrasound scans, in which only 18 ultrasound scans are drawn on the ground limit, but about 60 ultrasound scans are actually performed.

In FIG. 5, the side wall surface of the organ shows irregular reflection intensity and thus irregular density on the screen, so this situation is caused by whether the indefinite point is the side wall surface of the organ or other factors that may exist inside other organs. It is hard to know if you did. That is, the conventional ultrasonic measuring apparatus shows an image on the screen as it is reflected in the same state as other parts even in the case of obtaining the unclear reflected wave data on the side wall surface and does not perform any further data processing or processing.

In the present invention, the following novel method is used to distinguish such a partition.

First of all, the reflected wave in which a dense medium appears unlike other parts of the total 60 reflected waves, for example, based on either scan wave 6 or scan wave 7 in the illustrated state. Then, the reflection intensity is calculated in more detail with respect to the predetermined number of scan waves emitted from the left and right of the scan wave.

This process will be described in more detail with reference to the flowcharts of FIGS. 6 and 7.

To capture the reference scan wave is determined by the intensity of the reflected ultrasonic waves. That is, if there is a scan wave in which reflected waves with a stronger intensity than those of other adjacent scan waves among reflected waves with respect to ultrasonic scan waves are present, this scan wave becomes a reference wave. In FIG. 6, scan wave 7 is a reference scan wave.

Next, a certain number of left and right scan waves are set as analysis scan waves based on the reference waves. In the case of FIG. 6, scan waves 3 to 12 are set as analysis scan waves.

Each analysis scan wave undergoes the following logic for the reflected wave.

First, in FIG. 6, an enlarged scan wave in which the epidermal position of an organ is clearly defined, for example, scan wave 12, is described in terms of a measuring device. For each display point) and each point (triangular display point) between them, the reflected wave value is taken and its average value is obtained.

Usually, the inside of the bladder is mostly filled with liquids. In this case, the reflected ultrasonic waves are extremely small because there is almost no change in the ultrasonic impedance in the liquid. Therefore, the average intensity value of the ultrasonic waves reflected from the internal organ points is relatively smaller than the ultrasonic intensity reflected from the organ walls. Experience has also shown that these values are measured because the reflections from the center point to the anterior wall of the organ are more reliable than the epidermal point of the organ front wall to the internal center of the organ.

The steps of calculating the average value of the reflected waves in the order from scan wave 3 to scan wave 12 or vice versa are sequentially performed.

In obtaining such a reflected wave, confusion may occur at a reflection point measurement point at the unknown point. However, even at this unclear point, the ultrasonic waves indicating the position of the front wall and the rear wall can be measured, but only the data about the side wall surface portion described above to the side of the ultrasonic path direction cannot be captured. Therefore, the method of finding the aforementioned measuring point is the same as other scan waves and there is no problem.

In this way, if the average value of each reflected wave is obtained for the analysis scan wave, the following values can be obtained.

Scan wave number 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Average reflection 12 16 22 70 95 35 40 15 18 21 18

According to this, scan waves 6 to 9 can be seen that the reflection average value is significantly higher than other scan waves, and in particular, the scan wave 7 shows the highest value among them. If so, then at least in this situation, it can be concluded that the most material with acoustic impedance difference is placed on the path of Scan Wave 7, and conclude that this is the point where the wall of the organ is located.

In FIG. 8, the shape of each point is inferred using the average reflection values shown in the above table. That is, even if various errors are taken into account, it is possible to know how much the sidewall surface is covered according to the magnitude of the above values, and if connected smoothly, it is possible to roughly guess the shape and shape of the sidewall surface.

These guesses are not performed by humans, but are judged by a computer based on pre-entered logic. Therefore, if these scan lines are made more dense and more measurements are taken, these steps yield a reflection value that is almost in line with the actual situation. It is possible to draw an estimated side wall surface while keeping in line with the lines.

9 is a block diagram illustrating a structure of a computer program capable of performing the above steps by operating the ultrasonic measuring apparatus or a computer connected thereto.

9 is used to emit a plurality of ultrasonic scan waves toward an object such as a human organ or other mechanical device by using the ultrasonic measuring device and the computer and to receive the scan waves when they are reflected from inside the object. As it becomes,

A reference scan wave selecting means for selecting a reference scan wave whose intensity is greater than that of an adjacent reflected wave among the received reflected waves, and a predetermined number of scan waves on the left and right adjacent to the reference scan wave as the analysis scan wave; Analysis scan wave selection means,

Reflection value recognition means for recognizing reflection values at a plurality of predetermined points located inside the object with respect to each of the scan waves that substantially inform the skin position of the object among the analysis scan waves, and reflection of the predetermined points Average value calculating means for obtaining an average value that is an average of the values, and object skin position calculating means for estimating the skin position of the object using the average values.

Of course, the software can operate in conjunction with existing ultrasound image generation programs.

In the related art, the present invention has been able to roughly outline the sidewall surface only by the experience of medical personnel, from the ultrasound image of the organs of the body made using the reflected wave of the ultrasonic wave generated from the surface having irregular density. More precisely generated images can be obtained, which can greatly reduce inaccurate diagnosis or medical staff discomfort.

This method can be used preferentially for the diagnosis of urination abnormalities or urinary incontinence, in which the bladder volume has an important meaning.

Furthermore, this method can be used not only for measuring the interface but also for implementing the shapes of various body organs, and can be used not only for medical use but also for industrial use.

In addition, in the above-described method, the latter half reflection value from the center point to the rear wall of the body organ is used for the accuracy of the measurement. In addition, all the internal organ values may be used or the first half reflection value may be used.

Therefore, the scope of the present invention should be construed as including all such modifications.

Claims (9)

In the method of measuring the inside of an object using ultrasonic waves, Ultrasonic measuring device that can emit and receive ultrasonic waves and analyze them, Emitting at least two ultrasonic scan waves toward the object; Receiving the scan wave when it is reflected inside an object; Analyzing the position and intensity of the received reflected wave; As containing, The analyzing by the ultrasonic measuring device, Selecting a reference scan wave having the greatest intensity among the received reflected waves; Selecting at least one scan wave on each of the left and right sides as an analysis scan wave based on the reference scan wave; Recognizing reflection values at at least two or more points located inside the object for each of the analysis scan waves; Obtaining an average value which is an average of the reflection values of the predetermined points; Estimating the epidermal position of the object using the average values; Ultrasonic measuring method characterized in that it comprises a. The method of claim 1, The estimating of the epidermis position may include estimating the epidermis on the path of the scan wave having the largest value among the average values. The method of claim 1, And in the step of estimating the epidermal position, estimating the shape of the epidermis together based on the degree of the average value. The method of claim 3, wherein The ultrasonic measuring apparatus further includes an image generating module, The image generating module further comprises the step of generating an image of the skin of the object based on the estimated position and shape of the skin. The method of claim 1, The object is an ultrasonic measurement method, characterized in that the object contained in the human body, the body of the animal and the machine. The method of claim 1, And said object is a human bladder. The method of claim 1, The predetermined point is an ultrasonic measurement method, characterized in that selected from the positions from the center point of the object to just before the rear wall. In the ultrasonic measuring device for measuring the inside of an object using ultrasonic waves, Means for emitting at least two ultrasonic scan waves toward an object; Means for receiving the scan wave when it is reflected inside an object; Means for analyzing the position and intensity of the received reflected wave; Including, Means for analyzing the position and intensity of the reflected wave, Means for selecting a reference scan wave having the greatest intensity among the received reflected waves; Means for selecting at least one scan wave on each of the left and right sides of the reference scan wave as an analysis scan wave based on the reference scan wave; Means for recognizing reflection values at at least two or more points located within the object for each of the analysis scan waves; Means for obtaining an average value which is an average of the reflection values of the predetermined points; Means for estimating the skin location of the object using the average values; Ultrasonic measuring device comprising a. delete

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