KR20210091902A - A method and device for correcting patient's posture by analyzing patient's movement and emotional state - Google Patents

Abstract

Disclosed in the present specification is medical equipment and a method for controlling the same. The medical equipment comprises: a frame where a human body is positioned; a camera which generates images of the human body in a time sequential manner; and a control part which judges whether position change of the human body occurs based on the images of the human body. The control part controls a supporting part included in the frame to change a position of the human body.

Description

A method of controlling a medical device and a medical device that corrects the patient's posture by analyzing the patient's movement and emotional state {A METHOD AND DEVICE FOR CORRECTING PATIENT'S POSTURE BY ANALYZING PATIENT'S MOVEMENT AND EMOTIONAL STATE}

The present invention relates to a method for managing the movement of a patient.

Tumors located in organs such as the lungs or liver can move more than 2.5 cm in free breathing. In the case of the elderly, since cardiovascular and respiratory system functions are lowered, in this case, the uncertainty of the tumor location in determining a treatment target or performing radiotherapy in the treatment planning stage causes difficulties in accurate treatment.

Respiratory arrest treatment technology using a patient's abdominal compression device or a device that can quantitatively suppress respiration, such as ABC (Active Breath Control), has been developed to minimize movement according to respiration and to obtain an accurate photograph. However, these devices are not easy to apply to patients with reduced respiratory function.

To solve this problem, a system that tracks a patient's respiration in real time has been proposed as a solution. However, since these systems are set up by each manufacturer and are installed in expensive treatment machines and testers, it is difficult to generalize them, and it has only a function to track breathing. As a medical auxiliary device, the equipment that can correct the minute movements of a patient in real time is difficult. is not presented.

Laid-open Patent Publication No. 10-2019-0032599 (2019.03.27.)

The present specification provides a medical device for correcting the patient's posture by analyzing the patient's movement and emotional state, and a control method thereof.

A medical device according to an embodiment of the present invention for solving the above problem is a frame in which the human body is located; a camera that generates images of the human body in time series; and a controller configured to determine whether the position of the human body is changed based on the image of the human body. The control unit may control the support included in the frame to change the position of the human body.

The control unit determines a position correction range of the human body by comparing the current image in which the human body is expressed with a reference image in which the human body is expressed at a position where the human body is to be located, and the control unit determines the position correction range of the human body according to the position correction range can be controlled to change the position of the human body.

The support part may include a tilt part in contact with a part of the human body, and the controller may control the tilt part to change the position of the human body.

The support portion may further include a plurality of air pockets in contact with a part of the human body, and the control unit may change the position of the human body by inflating at least one air pocket among the plurality of air pockets.

In addition, the method for controlling a medical device according to an embodiment of the present invention for solving the above problem is a method of controlling the human body according to the position change of the human body from a plurality of images of the human body generated in time series with respect to the human body located on the frame. determining a position correction range; and changing the position of the human body by controlling the support part included in the frame according to the human body correction range.

The present invention provides a medical device and a method for controlling the same for analyzing a patient's movement and correcting the patient's posture to take a posture suitable for examination or treatment.

Furthermore, a medical device for correcting a patient's posture in consideration of the patient's emotions and a control method thereof are provided.

From this, the present invention provides the effect of providing effective medical services by directly correcting the patient's posture in order to consider the movement and emotions of the patient even in a space where the medical staff and the patient are separated in a surgical environment such as a radiation irradiation room. .

1 is a block diagram of a medical system according to an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating a method in which the medical system according to an embodiment of the present invention corrects a subject's posture and performs treatment according to the subject's posture information.
3 is a flowchart illustrating a method of correcting a subject's posture by additionally considering the subject's emotional information by the medical system according to an embodiment of the present invention.
4 is a conceptual diagram illustrating a radiation treatment system to which a medical system according to an embodiment of the present invention is applied.
FIG. 5 is an enlarged view of the upper frame of FIG. 4 .
6 is a modified embodiment of the upper frame of FIGS. 4 to 5 .
7 to 9 are views showing the use state of the support part of FIG.

The following is merely illustrative of the principles of the invention. Therefore, those skilled in the art can devise various devices that, although not explicitly described or shown herein, embody the principles of the invention and are included in the spirit and scope of the invention. In addition, it should be understood that all conditional terms and examples listed herein are, in principle, expressly intended only for the purpose of understanding the inventive concept and are not limited to the specifically enumerated embodiments and states as such. .

The above-described objects, features and advantages will become more apparent through the following detailed description in relation to the accompanying drawings, and accordingly, those of ordinary skill in the art to which the invention pertains will be able to easily practice the technical idea of the invention. .

In the specification and claims, terms such as "first," "second," "third," and "fourth," are used, if any, to distinguish between like elements, and are not necessarily used in a specific sequence. or to describe the order of occurrence. It will be understood that the terms so used are interchangeable under appropriate circumstances to enable the embodiments of the invention described herein to operate, for example, in sequences other than those shown or described herein. Likewise, where methods are described herein as including a series of steps, the order of those steps presented herein is not necessarily the order in which those steps may be performed, and any described steps may be omitted and/or Any other steps not described may be added to the method.

Also, terms such as "left", "right", "front", "behind", "top", "bottom", "above", "below" in the specification and claims are used for descriptive purposes, It is not necessarily intended to describe an invariant relative position. It will be understood that the terms so used are interchangeable under appropriate circumstances to enable the embodiments of the invention described herein to operate otherwise than, for example, as shown or described herein. As used herein, the term “connected” is defined as being directly or indirectly connected in an electrical or non-electrical manner. Objects described herein as being "adjacent" to one another may be in physical contact with one another, in proximity to one another, or in the same general scope or area as appropriate for the context in which the phrase is used. The presence of the phrase “in one embodiment” herein refers to the same, but not necessarily, embodiment.

In addition, in the specification and claims, references to 'connected', 'connecting', 'fastened', 'fastening', 'coupled', 'coupled', etc., and various variations of these expressions, refer to other elements directly It is used in the sense of being connected or indirectly connected through other components.

In addition, the suffixes "module" and "part" for the components used in this specification are given or mixed in consideration of the ease of writing the specification, and do not have distinct meanings or roles by themselves.

In addition, the terms used herein are for the purpose of describing the embodiments and are not intended to limit the present invention. As used herein, the singular also includes the plural unless specifically stated otherwise in the phrase. As used herein, 'comprise' and/or 'comprising' means that a referenced component, step, operation and/or element is the presence of one or more other components, steps, operations and/or elements. or addition is not excluded.

In addition, in the description of the invention, if it is determined that a detailed description of a known technology related to the invention may unnecessarily obscure the gist of the invention, the detailed description thereof will be omitted. Hereinafter, preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

Hereinafter, a medical system that corrects a patient's posture and performs an examination or treatment on a patient according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIG. 1 .

The medical system according to an embodiment may include a controller 10 , a posture/emotion information obtaining unit 20 , a posture correcting unit 30 , and an examination/treatment unit 40 . The control unit 10 controls the posture/emotion information obtaining unit 20, the posture correcting unit 30, and the examination/treatment unit 40 so that the medical staff performs medical actions such as examination or treatment on the patient's body. Correct the position of the patient's body as required by the

For example, the controller 10 may analyze the image of the patient acquired by the posture/emotion information obtaining unit 20 to determine the posture of the patient and determine whether posture correction is required. In an embodiment, the controller 10 may determine whether the posture is changed according to the degree of change in the posture of the patient from the reference posture, and may control the posture corrector 30 to actively correct the posture of the patient.

The posture/emotion information acquisition unit 20 generates posture information representing the patient's current posture and emotion information representing the patient's current emotion. In an embodiment, the posture/emotion information acquisition unit 20 may be configured with a camera and an image processing means for processing an image acquired by the camera to acquire a patient's body image or a patient's facial expression image.

The posture corrector 30 may be configured as a physical means for correcting the posture of the patient under the control of the controller 10 . In an embodiment, the posture correcting unit 30 may be implemented as the support unit described in FIGS. 5 to 9 , which will be described later.

The examination/treatment unit 40 may be configured as a means for emitting radiation for examination or treatment to the patient's body after the patient's posture is corrected. In an embodiment, the examination/treatment unit 40 may be a medical device such as a radiation examination apparatus, a magnetic resonance imaging apparatus, or a radiation treatment apparatus.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating a method for the medical system according to an embodiment of the present invention to correct a subject's posture and perform treatment according to the subject's posture information. Hereinafter, it is assumed that the examination or treatment performed by the examination/treatment unit 40 is radiation treatment, but the examination/treatment according to the present invention is not limited to radiation treatment.

First, the control unit 10 obtains the subject's posture information (S110). In an embodiment, the controller 10 may acquire the posture of the patient lying on the examination bed (upper frame in FIG. 4 ) as image data using the posture/emotion information obtaining unit 20 . Here, the image may be a 2D image or a 3D image. The posture/emotion information obtaining unit 20 may generate a 3D image having a depth value by using a depth camera.

Next, the control unit 10 determines whether it is necessary to correct the posture of the subject (S120). In an embodiment, the controller 10 may determine that the patient's posture should be corrected when the patient is taking a posture that is not suitable for emitting radiation according to movement.

For example, if the patient moves even after the medical personnel guides the patient to a position suitable for radiation therapy, the patient's body may be located in a position not suitable for radiation therapy. In this case, the controller 10 may determine that the posture of the patient should be corrected.

In order to determine this, the controller 10 may determine the movement of the patient using a reference difference mode (RDM) method, a sequential difference mode (SDM) method, or an alpha difference mode (ADM) method.

In the RDM method, an image frame at the moment the radiation beam is irradiated to start radiation treatment is selected as a reference frame. The RDM method calculates the motion ratio by calculating the difference between the n-th image frame and the reference image frame that are continuously generated while radiation therapy is in progress. In an embodiment, the RDM method may calculate a motion ratio based on a ratio of pixels having a difference value equal to or greater than a preset threshold value with respect to the total number of pixels constituting an image frame. For example, when 30% of pixels among the total number of pixels constituting an image frame have a difference value equal to or greater than a threshold value, the motion ratio may be determined to be 30%.

In the SDM method, the n-1 th image frame, which is an image frame immediately before the n th image frame generated at the current time point when radiation therapy is in progress, is selected as a reference frame. The SMD method calculates the motion ratio by calculating the difference between the n-th image frame and the n-1 th image frame. In an embodiment, the SDM scheme may calculate a motion ratio based on a ratio of pixels having a difference value equal to or greater than a preset threshold value with respect to the total number of pixels constituting an image frame like the RDM scheme.

The RDM method has an advantage in that it responds to minute movements because all pixels of the current image frame that are different from the reference image frame are detected. However, since all movements and changes other than the patient are detected and reflected in the movement, there is a possibility that the movement rate (%) more than necessary can be made. On the other hand, the SDM method has an advantage that it does not respond to minute movements because all pixels with a current real-time image and movement are detected according to the speed. However, there are disadvantages in that it is difficult to continuously detect the movement of the patient, and it is difficult to detect small and fine movements.

The ADM method determines whether to move based on the difference between the n-th image frame generated at the current time point and the reference image frame. In this case, the reference image frame is generated by using the difference between the n-1 th image frame, which is the previous image frame, and the reference image frame with respect to the previous image frame. The pixel values of the reference image frame are determined by applying a filter.

The process of generating the reference image frame of the nth image frame, which is the current image frame, will be described in more detail. In an embodiment, the ADM scheme generates a differential image frame between an n−1 th image frame and a reference image frame for the n−1 th image frame. The ADM method detects a pixel having a value greater than or equal to a preset threshold in the differential image frame. In the ADM method, the pixel value (first pixel value) of the n-1 th image frame corresponding to the position of the pixel having a value greater than or equal to the threshold value in the differential image frame and the pixel value of the reference image frame for the n-1 th image frame ( The second pixel value) may be added to generate a pixel value (third pixel value) for a corresponding position of the reference image frame with respect to the n-th image frame. In this case, a filter value may be applied to the first pixel value and the second pixel value. In an embodiment, when the filter value is 0.9, the third pixel value may be calculated as follows.

[Equation 1]

3rd pixel value = 1st pixel value * 0.1 + 2nd pixel value * 0.9

An appropriate filter value can be obtained through experimentation. When the tomotherapy (CT) treatment bed is driven at a constant speed and the filter value is changed from 0.8 to 1, the movement rate (%) is checked. As a result, when the filter value has a value of 1, it is found that the movement rate continuously increases. . However, when the filter value has a value less than 1, it appears that the motion rate is reduced. Experimental results show that values from 0.8 to less than 1 can be used as filter values. Experimental results indicate that, among them, using a value between 0.85 and 0.90 can optimize the motion ratio.

In the ADM method, for a pixel having a value less than the threshold value in the differential image frame, the pixel value (second pixel value) of the reference image frame for the n-1 th image frame is determined at the corresponding position of the reference image frame for the n th image frame. It can be determined as a pixel value (third pixel value) for .

Next, the control unit 10 determines the subject's posture correction range (S130). In one embodiment, the control unit 10 is an image frame at the moment the radiation beam is irradiated to start radiation treatment and the posture of the subject identified in the n-th image frame that is the current image frame (referred to as the first image frame) or The posture correction range of the subject may be determined according to the difference in the subject's posture identified in the reference image frame utilized in step S120.

For example, the controller 10 may determine the subject's posture correction range for moving a part of the patient's body (e.g. shoulder) recognized in the n-th image frame to a position recognized in the first image frame. For this purpose, a body movement range corresponding to pixel positions between image frames may be calculated in advance and stored in the controller 10 .

Meanwhile, the correction range may be calculated separately for each part of the body. To implement this, the controller 10 may determine whether or not the posture correction is necessary and the posture correction range by specifying each part of the body.

Next, the control unit 10 corrects the posture of the subject (S140). When it is determined that the patient's posture needs to be corrected, the controller 10 may correct the patient's posture through the posture corrector 30 . The posture correcting unit 30 may correct the patient's posture by moving the position of a part of the patient's body minutely so that the patient's body is placed in a position suitable for emitting radiation.

Next, the control unit 10 starts the examination or treatment for the subject (S150). When it is determined that the subject's posture is suitable for examination or treatment, the control unit 10 performs a process for examination or treatment on the patient through the examination/treatment unit 40 .

3 is a flowchart illustrating a method of correcting a subject's posture by additionally considering the subject's emotional information by the medical system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

First, the control unit 10 obtains emotional information of the subject (S210). In an embodiment, the controller 10 may acquire the facial expression of the patient lying on the examination bed as an image through the posture/emotion information acquisition unit (e.g. camera). The controller 10 may obtain emotional information of the patient by processing the acquired image.

In an embodiment, the controller 10 may identify the patient's emotion using a neural network analysis model. In an embodiment, the controller 10 may analyze the patient's emotion using an emotion analysis model generated using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model or a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) model. In an embodiment, the emotion analysis model may be a neural network classification model learned using training data in which an emotion classification value is matched in advance with an expression image of a person. In the training process of the neural network model, parameters of the neural network model may be modified through a backpropagation process so that the neural network model provides an appropriate classification value for the facial expression image. Accordingly, the emotion analysis model may receive a facial expression image of a person as an input and provide an emotion classification value for the corresponding image as an output.

In an embodiment, the emotion analysis model may classify the intensity of emotion along with the type of emotion. To this end, the emotion analysis model may be learned using training data in which the type of emotion and the intensity of emotion are matched together with the facial expression image. Such an emotion analysis model may receive a facial expression image of a person as an input and output the type of emotion and the intensity of the emotion as a result value.

Next, the control unit 10 determines whether it is necessary to correct the posture of the subject (S220). In an embodiment, the controller 10 may determine that the patient's posture needs to be corrected when the patient's emotional information is a negative emotion such as 'discomfort'. In addition, when the patient's emotional information for correcting the patient's posture is a negative emotion such as 'discomfort', the controller 10 may determine whether the patient's posture needs to be corrected according to the intensity of the emotion.

The step of determining whether the patient's posture needs to be corrected may be performed during the subject's posture correction process described above with reference to FIG. 2 . For example, in the process of correcting the subject's posture according to the subject's posture information ( S140 ), the controller 10 may determine whether the subject's posture correction is necessary when the subject's emotion is 'inconvenient' and the intensity is high.

Next, the controller 10 determines a correction range for the subject's posture (S230). In an embodiment, when it is decided to correct the subject's posture, the controller 10 may determine the subject's posture correction range. The controller 10 may determine the correction range of the posture according to the intensity of the subject's emotions. For example, in the process of correcting the subject's posture according to the subject's posture information (S140), if the patient's emotions appear to be very uncomfortable, this may mean that the subject is uncomfortable according to the result of the posture correction. Accordingly, the controller 10 may adjust the subject's posture correction range according to the subject's posture information. For example, when the subject's emotion is 'inconvenient', the posture correction range may be determined by canceling the correction made in step S140 according to the correction range determined in step S130. In an embodiment, the posture correction range may be determined as a correction range that partially reverses the posture correction range calculated in step S130 .

For example, in step S130, the correction range was determined by moving a part of the body 5 cm to the left, and as a result, a part of the body may be moved 5 cm to the left. At this time, if the intensity of the subject's 'discomfort' emotion is very high, the correction range can be determined by moving a part of the body by 5 cm to the right, and the intensity of the subject's 'discomfort' emotion is high. In this case, the correction range can be determined by moving a part of the body by 3 cm to the right, and when the intensity of the subject's 'discomfort' emotion falls within the normal range, the correction range can be determined by moving a part of the body by 1 cm to the right. there is.

As such, when the patient's emotions appear to be very uncomfortable, the degree of correcting the subject's posture may be lowered more according to the subject's posture change than in the case where the patient's emotions appear to be slightly uncomfortable.

As such, when the subject's posture is corrected according to the user's emotional information, it may be determined whether the subject's posture needs to be corrected (S120) of FIG. 2 by using the subject as the basic posture. For example, an image frame in a state in which the subject's posture is corrected may be selected as a reference image frame used in steps S120 and S130.

Next, as described in FIG. 2 , the controller 10 may correct the subject's posture (S240), and start an examination or treatment for the subject (S250).

4 is a conceptual diagram illustrating a radiation treatment system to which a medical system according to an embodiment of the present invention is applied. The radiation therapy system according to an embodiment of the present invention includes a control unit (not shown), an upper frame 100 in which the patient 1 is located, a lower frame 200 and an upper frame 100 supporting the upper frame 100 . It is composed of a camera unit 300 that acquires an image of the patient 1 from the top, and a first display 400 that expresses the posture of the patient 1 as necessary and a second display 400 that displays information for treatment of the patient It may be configured as a display 500 .

FIG. 5 is an enlarged view of the upper frame of FIG. 4 . The upper frame includes a frame body 101 , a guide 120 formed on the body, at least one support part 110 that can move along the guide 120 , and at least one first motor for controlling the movement of the support part 100 . 130 and the second motor 140 for rotating the frame body 101 itself left/right. Accordingly, the support 110 may be moved along the guide 120 according to the operation of the first motor 130 . Alternatively, the support 110 may rise or fall according to a motor (or pump) built into the support 110 . Accordingly, the support 110 may move the position of the user's body in contact with it. In addition, as the frame body 101 itself is rotated left/right by the second motor 140 , the patient's body may be moved left/right.

6 is a modified embodiment of the upper frame of FIGS. 4 to 5 . The upper frame of FIG. 6 may include a frame body 101 and at least one support unit 160 formed on the frame body. In one embodiment, three supports may be disposed along the longitudinal direction of the upper frame.

In a basic state, the upper surface of the support unit 160 may have the same height as the upper surface of the frame body. However, the height of a portion of the top surface of the support 160 may be changed if there is a need to correct the posture.

Hereinafter, the support 160 of FIG. 6 will be described with reference to FIGS. 7 to 9 . 7 to 9 are views illustrating the use state of the support unit 160 . The support part 160 may be configured to include a tilt part 162 and air pockets 163a to 163d on one surface.

As shown in (a) and (b) of FIG. 7 , the tilt unit 162 may be tilted left/right based on the illustrated shape. Also, as shown in FIG. 8 , the tilt unit 162 may be tilted up/down. As such, the tilt unit 162 may be tilted up/down/left/right to move the patient's body in a predetermined direction.

It may be necessary to move the user's body at a finer level than that of the user's body by the tilt unit 162 . Air pockets 163a to 163d may be used for fine movement of the user's body. As shown in FIG. 9 , the air pockets 163a to 163d may be selectively inflated to move the patient's body minutely.

In one embodiment, in a state in which the tilt unit 162 is tilted up/down/left/right, only the upper air pockets 163a and 163b are inflated, such as only some air pockets are inflated by the tilt unit 162 . In addition to the movement of the user's body, a fine movement effect may be additionally provided.

Alternatively, the effect of pushing the body of the patient located at the upper end of the air pockets 163a to 163d toward the front (camera side) by all of the air pockets 163a to 163d inflate in a state in which the tilt unit 162 is not tilted. may provide.

The method for controlling a medical device according to an embodiment described above may be implemented in the form of a program command that can be executed through various computer means and recorded in a computer-readable medium. The computer-readable medium may include program instructions, data files, data structures, etc. alone or in combination. The program instructions recorded on the medium may be specially designed and configured according to the embodiment, or may be known and used by those skilled in the art of computer software. Examples of the computer-readable recording medium include magnetic media such as hard disks, floppy disks and magnetic tapes, optical media such as CD-ROMs and DVDs, and magnetic such as floppy disks. - a hardware platform diet management server 10 specially configured to store and execute program instructions such as magneto-optical media, and ROM, RAM, flash memory, and the like. Examples of program instructions include not only machine language codes such as those generated by a compiler, but also high-level language codes that can be executed by a computer using an interpreter or the like.

Each of the drawings referenced in the description of the previous embodiment is merely an embodiment shown for convenience of description, and items, contents, and images of information displayed on each screen may be modified and displayed in various forms.

Although the present invention has been described with reference to one embodiment shown in the drawings, this is merely exemplary, and those of ordinary skill in the art will understand that various modifications and equivalent other embodiments are possible therefrom. Accordingly, the true technical protection scope of the present invention should be determined by the technical spirit of the appended claims.

Claims (5)

a frame in which the human body is located;
a camera that generates images of the human body in time series; and
A control unit for determining whether the position of the human body is changed based on the image of the human body,
The control unit controls the support included in the frame to change the position of the human body. The method of claim 1,
The control unit determines the position correction range of the human body by comparing the current image in which the human body is expressed and a reference image in which the human body is expressed at a position where the human body should be located,
The control unit controls the support unit according to the position correction range to change the position of the human body. The method of claim 1,
The support part includes a tilt part in contact with a part of the human body,
The control unit controls the tilt unit to change the position of the human body. 4. The method of claim 3,
The support further comprises a plurality of air pockets in contact with a part of the human body,
The control unit is a medical device for changing the position of the human body by inflating at least one of the plurality of air pockets. A method for controlling a medical device, comprising:
determining a position correction range of the human body according to a position change of the human body from a plurality of images of the human body generated in time series with respect to the human body positioned on a frame; and
and changing the position of the human body by controlling a support included in the frame according to the position correction range.

Images