KR102025966B1 - Ultrasound system and method for determining geometric information of ultrasound probe - Google Patents
Ultrasound system and method for determining geometric information of ultrasound probe Download PDFInfo
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- KR102025966B1 KR102025966B1 KR1020150124771A KR20150124771A KR102025966B1 KR 102025966 B1 KR102025966 B1 KR 102025966B1 KR 1020150124771 A KR1020150124771 A KR 1020150124771A KR 20150124771 A KR20150124771 A KR 20150124771A KR 102025966 B1 KR102025966 B1 KR 102025966B1
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- A—HUMAN NECESSITIES
- A61—MEDICAL OR VETERINARY SCIENCE; HYGIENE
- A61B—DIAGNOSIS; SURGERY; IDENTIFICATION
- A61B8/00—Diagnosis using ultrasonic, sonic or infrasonic waves
- A61B8/42—Details of probe positioning or probe attachment to the patient
- A61B8/4245—Details of probe positioning or probe attachment to the patient involving determining the position of the probe, e.g. with respect to an external reference frame or to the patient
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- A—HUMAN NECESSITIES
- A61—MEDICAL OR VETERINARY SCIENCE; HYGIENE
- A61B—DIAGNOSIS; SURGERY; IDENTIFICATION
- A61B8/00—Diagnosis using ultrasonic, sonic or infrasonic waves
- A61B8/13—Tomography
- A61B8/14—Echo-tomography
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- A—HUMAN NECESSITIES
- A61—MEDICAL OR VETERINARY SCIENCE; HYGIENE
- A61B—DIAGNOSIS; SURGERY; IDENTIFICATION
- A61B8/00—Diagnosis using ultrasonic, sonic or infrasonic waves
- A61B8/44—Constructional features of the ultrasonic, sonic or infrasonic diagnostic device
- A61B8/4444—Constructional features of the ultrasonic, sonic or infrasonic diagnostic device related to the probe
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- A—HUMAN NECESSITIES
- A61—MEDICAL OR VETERINARY SCIENCE; HYGIENE
- A61B—DIAGNOSIS; SURGERY; IDENTIFICATION
- A61B8/00—Diagnosis using ultrasonic, sonic or infrasonic waves
- A61B8/54—Control of the diagnostic device
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Abstract
An ultrasound system and method for determining geometric information of an ultrasound probe is disclosed. The ultrasound system includes an ultrasound probe and a processor. The ultrasonic probe includes a plurality of piezoelectric elements operable to transmit a plurality of ultrasonic signals to the object and receive ultrasonic echo signals from the object. The processor samples the ultrasonic echo signal at predetermined time intervals to obtain a plurality of ultrasonic data, determines a first time interval representing a peak value in the ultrasonic data for the ultrasonic echo signal, and based on the predetermined geometric information of the ultrasonic probe. Thus, a second time interval for the ultrasonic signal to move the distance between each of the plurality of piezoelectric elements and the object of interest in the object is determined, and based on the plurality of first time intervals and the plurality of second time intervals, the geometry of the ultrasonic probe Operate to determine information.
Description
FIELD The present disclosure relates to ultrasound systems, and more particularly, to ultrasound systems and methods for determining geometric information of ultrasound probes.
Ultrasound systems are widely used in the medical field for obtaining information about internal tissues of living bodies. The ultrasound system may provide high-resolution images of the subject in real time using high frequency sound waves without the need for surgical surgery to directly incision and observe the subject. Ultrasonic systems have non-invasive and non-destructive properties and are very important in the medical field.
The ultrasound system transmits an ultrasound signal to an object in the object, and receives an ultrasound signal reflected from the object using a reception focusing technique. Based on the received ultrasound signal, an ultrasound image of the object is formed and displayed.
In order to improve the image quality of an ultrasound image, an ultrasound system typically uses a transmission focusing technique and a reception focusing technique. For example, the transmission focusing focuses the ultrasonic signal transmitted by each transducer element of the ultrasonic transducer in the ultrasonic probe by applying a time delay to the ultrasonic signal to simultaneously reach a predetermined point in the object. On the other hand, the receive focusing technique adds an appropriate time delay to the ultrasound signal received by the transducer element of the ultrasound transducer to form an ultrasound image using the ultrasound signal received from different distances. As such, the transmission focusing and reception focusing techniques improve the image quality of the ultrasound image.
In particular, the ultrasound system calculates a delay time for performing focusing on the ultrasonic signals reaching each transducer element based on the geometric information of the ultrasonic probe, and performs the focusing of the ultrasonic signals based on the calculated delay time. . This geometric information is preset information provided by the manufacturer of the ultrasonic probe.
Conventionally, without considering the error due to the refraction of the ultrasonic signal (sound field) generated from the skin of the object and the ultrasonic probe, the error that may occur in the production process of the ultrasonic transducer, and the like based on the predetermined geometric information Since reception focusing is performed on a signal, there is a limit in improving the resolution of an ultrasound image of an object.
The present disclosure provides an ultrasound system and method for acquiring an ultrasonic signal for each of a plurality of focusing depths and determining geometric information of the ultrasonic probe based on the obtained ultrasonic signal and predetermined geometric information of the ultrasonic probe.
In one embodiment, the ultrasound system includes an ultrasound probe and a processor. The ultrasonic probe includes a plurality of piezoelectric elements, and is configured to transmit a plurality of ultrasonic signals into the object based on the plurality of focusing depths, and receive an ultrasonic echo signal from the object for each of the plurality of focusing depths. The processor acquires a plurality of ultrasonic data by sampling each of the ultrasonic echo signals at a predetermined time interval, and determines a first time interval representing a peak value in the ultrasonic data for each of the plurality of echo signals. The processor determines a second time interval for the ultrasonic signal to move the distance between the piezoelectric element and the object of interest in the object based on preset geometric information of the ultrasonic probe. The processor determines the geometric information of the ultrasound probe based on a plurality of first time intervals and a plurality of second time intervals, and allocates the determined geometric information to the ultrasound probe.
In another embodiment, a method of determining geometric information of an ultrasonic probe in an ultrasonic system includes transmitting, by the ultrasonic probe including a plurality of piezoelectric elements, a plurality of ultrasonic signals in the object based on a plurality of focusing depths. And receiving, by each of the plurality of piezoelectric elements of the ultrasonic probe, an ultrasonic echo signal from the object for each of the plurality of focusing depths, and sampling each of the ultrasonic echo signals at a predetermined time interval. Acquiring an ultrasound data of the second ultrasound signal, determining a first time interval representing a peak value in the ultrasound data for each of the plurality of ultrasound echo signals, and based on predetermined geometric information of the ultrasound probe, Ultrasonic distance between the device and the object of interest in the object Determining a second time interval for the call to move, determining the geometric information of the ultrasound probe based on a plurality of first time intervals and a plurality of second time intervals, and converting the determined geometric information into the ultrasound Assigning to the probe.
According to the present disclosure, the geometric information of the ultrasonic probe may be determined based on the unfocused ultrasonic signal, and the error generated during the production of the ultrasonic probe or the ultrasonic signal (sound field) generated from the ultrasonic probe and the skin of the object may be determined. Errors due to refraction can be compensated for.
1 is a block diagram schematically showing the configuration of an ultrasound system according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.
2 is a block diagram schematically illustrating a configuration of a processor according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.
3 is a schematic diagram of an ultrasonic transducer and a receiver according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.
4 is a flowchart illustrating a method performed by the geometric information determination unit according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.
5 is an exemplary view showing sampling data for a plurality of sampling points according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.
6 is an exemplary view showing a maximum size and position of sampling data according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.
7 is an exemplary view showing geometric information according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.
8 is a flowchart illustrating a procedure of determining a second time interval according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.
9 is an exemplary view showing a two-dimensional coordinate value of the ultrasonic transducer according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.
Hereinafter, embodiments of the present disclosure will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. The term " part " used in this embodiment means software or a hardware component such as a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), or the like. However, "part" is not limited to hardware and software. The "unit" may be configured to be in an addressable storage medium, and may be configured to play one or more processors. Thus, as an example, "parts" means components such as software components, object-oriented software components, class components, and task components, and processors, functions, properties, procedures, subroutines, program code. Includes segments, drivers, firmware, microcode, circuits, data, databases, data structures, tables, arrays, and variables. Functions provided within a component and "part" may be combined into a smaller number of components and "parts" or further separated into additional components and "parts".
1 is a block diagram schematically illustrating a configuration of an
As illustrated in FIG. 3, each of the plurality of transducer elements 112_1 to 112_N of the
In the
2 is a block diagram schematically illustrating a configuration of a
In one embodiment, the
According to an embodiment, the
The
The
For example, the
3 is a schematic diagram of an
The
The
Referring back to FIG. 2, the
The
The
Referring back to FIG. 1, the
The
The
4 is a flowchart illustrating a method performed by the
The
In an embodiment, the
For example, the
In addition, the
In addition, the
The geometric
In one embodiment, the
In the case of three focusing depths, for example, the geometric
The
For example, the
In Equation 1, T FTP (i) represents the first time interval for the i-th channel, T SI represents the sampling period, and P MAX (i) indicates that the sampling data will reach the peak value in the i-th channel. The number of samplings at the time, that is, the position of the sampling point corresponding to the sampling data of the peak value in the i-th channel.
In a sampling period (T SI) that is 2.5e -2 ㎲, the peak value for the i-th sampled data channel 677th sampling points (i.e., P MAX = 677) (that is, a maximum size) according to the equation (1) In the case of corresponding sampling data, the first time interval (i.e., reception propagation time) for the i-th channel is 16.925 ms (16.925 ms = 2.5e -2 ms x 677).
Referring back to FIG. 4, the
In one embodiment, the
For example, the depth of the object of interest in the object may be calculated according to the following equation.
In
The
In one embodiment, the
The geometric information and the preset geometric information include, but are not necessarily limited to, at least one of the radius of curvature of the
8 is a flowchart illustrating a method of determining a second time interval according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. Referring to FIG. 8, the
In an exemplary embodiment, as illustrated in FIG. 9, the
For example, the two-dimensional coordinate values of the transducer elements 112_1 to 112_N may be determined according to the following equation.
In Equation 3, x (i) represents the X-axis coordinate value of the ith transducer element, y (i) represents the Y-axis coordinate value of the ith transducer element, N represents a positive integer, L ROC represents the radius of curvature and L PT represents the pitch length.
Referring back to FIG. 8, the
For example, the distance between each transducer element 112_1 to 112_N and the object of interest in the object may be determined according to the following equation.
In Equation 4, L ele (i) represents the distance between the i th transducer element and the object of interest in the object, x (i) represents the X-axis coordinate value of the i th transducer element, and D target represents an intra- object. Denotes the depth of the object of interest, L ROC denotes the radius of curvature and y (i) denotes the Y-axis coordinate value of the i th transducer element.
The
For example, the second time interval for each transducer element 112_1 to 112_N may be determined according to the following equation.
In Equation 5, T STP (i) represents the second time interval for the i th transducer element, L ele (i) represents the distance between the i th transducer element and the object of interest in the object, and S speed is Sound velocity (eg, 1540 m / s) in the object.
Referring back to FIG. 4, the
For example, the first time interval determined in step S408 is used as a target value of the minimum squared error minimization operation, and the second time interval determined in step S412 is used as an initial value of the minimum squared error minimization operation, thereby minimizing the minimum squared error. The operation can be performed.
Subsequently, the
In addition, the
Subsequently, the minimum squared error minimization operation may be performed by using the first time interval as a target value of the minimum squared error minimization operation and using the new second time interval as an initial value of the minimum squared error minimization operation.
The
Referring back to FIG. 4, the
In some embodiments, the
In Equation 6, L 0-PT represents a preset pitch length, L 0-ROC represents a preset radius of curvature, L n -PT represents a determined pitch length, and L n -ROC represents a determined radius of curvature. Indicates.
While specific embodiments have been described, these embodiments are presented by way of example and should not be construed as limiting the scope of the disclosure. The novel methods and apparatus of the present disclosure may be embodied in a variety of other forms and furthermore, various omissions, substitutions and changes in the embodiments disclosed herein are possible without departing from the spirit of the present disclosure. The claims appended hereto and their equivalents should be construed to include all such forms and modifications as fall within the scope and spirit of the disclosure.
100: ultrasonic system 110: ultrasonic probe
112: ultrasonic transducer
112_1 to 112_N: transducer elements
120: processor 130: storage unit
140: control panel 150: display unit
210: transmitting unit 220: transmission and reception switch
230: receiver 240: geometric information determiner
250: signal processor 260: image forming unit
310: signal amplifiers 310_1 to 310_N: amplifiers
320: signal converter 320_1 to 320_N: ADC
710: piezoelectric element 720: jig
CH 1 to CH N : channel
Claims (20)
Transmitting, by the ultrasonic probe including a plurality of piezoelectric elements, a plurality of ultrasonic signals in the object based on the plurality of focusing depths;
Receiving, by each of the plurality of piezoelectric elements of the ultrasonic probe, an ultrasonic echo signal from the object for each of the plurality of focusing depths;
Sampling each of the ultrasonic echo signals at a predetermined time interval to obtain a plurality of ultrasonic data;
Determining a first time interval representing a peak value in the ultrasound data for each of the plurality of ultrasound echo signals;
Determining a second time interval for the ultrasound signal to move a distance between each of the plurality of piezoelectric elements and the object of interest in the object based on preset geometric information of the ultrasound probe;
Determining the geometric information about the ultrasound probe based on the first time interval and the second time interval;
Allocating the determined geometric information to the ultrasonic probe
How to include.
Performing Hilbert transform on the ultrasonic data for each of the ultrasonic echo signals;
Detecting ultrasonic data having the peak value in the ultrasonic data for each of the ultrasonic echo signals based on the converted ultrasonic data;
Determining the first time interval based on the ultrasonic data having a peak value for each of the ultrasonic echo signals and the preset time interval
How to include.
(Mathematical formula)
It is calculated according to the above equation,
T FTP method, which is the number of sampling of the time it reaches the first represents the time interval, T SI is pre-designated time denotes gangyeokreul, P MAX is the value of the ultrasonic data peak.
Determining a minimum first time interval in the plurality of first time intervals;
Determining a depth of the object of interest based on the minimum first time interval and the speed of sound in the object;
Determining the distance between each of the piezoelectric elements and the object of interest based on the preset geometric information and the depth of the object of interest;
Determining the second time interval based on the distance and the speed of sound within the object
How to include.
(Mathematical formula)
Calculated by the above equation,
D target represents the depth of the object of interest, min (T FTP ) represents the minimum first time interval, S speed represents the speed of sound in the object.
(Mathematical formula)
Is calculated according to the equation, T STP is shown how the speed of sound within denotes the second time interval, ele L denotes the distance, speed S is the target object.
Obtaining a minimum error value by performing a minimum squared error minimization based on the plurality of first time intervals and the plurality of second time intervals;
Setting geometric information associated with the minimum error value as the geometric information of the ultrasound probe
How to include.
Performing beamforming based on the geometric information of the ultrasonic probe
How to include more.
An ultrasonic probe comprising a plurality of piezoelectric elements configured to transmit a plurality of ultrasonic signals in the object based on the plurality of focusing depths, and receive an ultrasonic echo signal from the object for each of the plurality of focusing depths;
Sampling each of the ultrasonic echo signals at predetermined time intervals to obtain a plurality of ultrasonic data, determining a first time interval representing a peak value in the ultrasonic data for each of the plurality of echo signals, and pre-setting the ultrasonic probe. Based on the set geometric information, a second time interval for the ultrasonic signal to move the distance between each of the plurality of piezoelectric elements and the object of interest in the object is determined, and based on the first time interval and the second time interval. A processor configured to determine the geometric information about the ultrasound probe and to assign the determined geometric information to the ultrasound probe
Ultrasound system comprising a.
Performing a Hilbert transform on the ultrasonic data for each of the ultrasonic echo signals,
Detecting ultrasound data having the peak value from the ultrasound data based on the converted ultrasound data,
And determine the first time interval based on the ultrasonic data having a peak value for each of the ultrasonic echo signals and the preset time interval.
(Mathematical formula)
It is calculated according to the above equation,
T FTP represents a first time interval, T SI represents a preset time interval, and P MAX represents the number of sampling when the ultrasonic data reaches a peak value.
Determine a minimum first time interval in the plurality of first time intervals,
Determine the depth of the object of interest based on the minimum first time interval and the speed of sound in the object,
Determine the distance between each of the piezoelectric elements and the object of interest based on the preset geometric information and the depth of the object of interest;
And determine the second time interval based on the distance and the speed of sound within the object.
(Mathematical formula)
It is calculated according to the above equation,
D target represents the depth of the object of interest, min (T FTP ) represents the minimum first time interval, S speed represents the speed of sound in the object.
(Mathematical formula)
Calculated according to the equation, T STP represents the second time interval, L ele represents the distance, S speed represents the speed of sound in the object.
Obtaining a minimum error value by performing a minimum squared error minimization based on the plurality of first time intervals and the second time intervals;
And set the geometric information associated with the minimum error value to the geometric information of the ultrasound probe.
And the processor is configured to perform beamforming based on the geometric information of the ultrasonic probe.
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JP2009532089A (en) | 2006-03-30 | 2009-09-10 | アロカ株式会社 | Delay controller for ultrasonic receiving beamformer |
JP2010213771A (en) | 2009-03-13 | 2010-09-30 | Fujifilm Corp | Ultrasonic probe and ultrasonograph |
US20150049578A1 (en) | 2013-08-19 | 2015-02-19 | General Electric Company | Systems and methods for ultrasound retrospective transmit focus beamforming |
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JP2009532089A (en) | 2006-03-30 | 2009-09-10 | アロカ株式会社 | Delay controller for ultrasonic receiving beamformer |
JP2010213771A (en) | 2009-03-13 | 2010-09-30 | Fujifilm Corp | Ultrasonic probe and ultrasonograph |
US20150049578A1 (en) | 2013-08-19 | 2015-02-19 | General Electric Company | Systems and methods for ultrasound retrospective transmit focus beamforming |
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