WO2012055543A1 - Anwendung eines zweidimensionalen analytischen signals in der sonographie - Google Patents
Anwendung eines zweidimensionalen analytischen signals in der sonographie Download PDFInfo
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Classifications
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- G—PHYSICS
- G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
- G06T—IMAGE DATA PROCESSING OR GENERATION, IN GENERAL
- G06T7/00—Image analysis
- G06T7/0002—Inspection of images, e.g. flaw detection
- G06T7/0012—Biomedical image inspection
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- G—PHYSICS
- G01—MEASURING; TESTING
- G01S—RADIO DIRECTION-FINDING; RADIO NAVIGATION; DETERMINING DISTANCE OR VELOCITY BY USE OF RADIO WAVES; LOCATING OR PRESENCE-DETECTING BY USE OF THE REFLECTION OR RERADIATION OF RADIO WAVES; ANALOGOUS ARRANGEMENTS USING OTHER WAVES
- G01S7/00—Details of systems according to groups G01S13/00, G01S15/00, G01S17/00
- G01S7/52—Details of systems according to groups G01S13/00, G01S15/00, G01S17/00 of systems according to group G01S15/00
- G01S7/52017—Details of systems according to groups G01S13/00, G01S15/00, G01S17/00 of systems according to group G01S15/00 particularly adapted to short-range imaging
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- G01S15/00—Systems using the reflection or reradiation of acoustic waves, e.g. sonar systems
- G01S15/88—Sonar systems specially adapted for specific applications
- G01S15/89—Sonar systems specially adapted for specific applications for mapping or imaging
- G01S15/8906—Short-range imaging systems; Acoustic microscope systems using pulse-echo techniques
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- G01S7/00—Details of systems according to groups G01S13/00, G01S15/00, G01S17/00
- G01S7/52—Details of systems according to groups G01S13/00, G01S15/00, G01S17/00 of systems according to group G01S15/00
- G01S7/52017—Details of systems according to groups G01S13/00, G01S15/00, G01S17/00 of systems according to group G01S15/00 particularly adapted to short-range imaging
- G01S7/52077—Details of systems according to groups G01S13/00, G01S15/00, G01S17/00 of systems according to group G01S15/00 particularly adapted to short-range imaging with means for elimination of unwanted signals, e.g. noise or interference
Definitions
- the present invention relates to the application of a two-dimensional analytical signal in sonography, and more particularly to methods and apparatus for ultrasound imaging which calculate the two-dimensional analytical signal for signal processing of reflected sound pulses.
- Sonography also known as echography, ultrasound imaging or ultrasound
- ultrasound imaging is the application of sound pulses and in particular ultrasound pulses as an imaging method for the non-invasive examination of the internal structure and the internal structuring of objects, ie. H. the object to be examined can be examined from the outside without the need for dissection or dissection of the object to be examined.
- a transducer generally emits sound pulses that are differently absorbed, scattered and reflected due to the inhomogeneity of the material or tissue inside the object to be examined.
- An echo of the sound pulses reflected back to a receiver which can be integrated in the transducer itself, is received by the latter and subsequently processed into a signal which allows conclusions to be drawn about the internal structure of the object to be examined.
- sonography Due to the non-invasive examination option, sonography is used in many areas. Thus, for example, in human medicine or veterinary medicine, the structure, location and arrangement of organs or other tissue in a patient or an animal are sonographically examined without the need for surgical procedures or other invasive measures. In addition, due to the characteristics of the sound pulses used, the sonographic examination does not expose the object to be examined, and in particular the tissue, to any harmful radiation. About the In addition to human and veterinary applications, sonography is used in numerous technical applications, eg. As in the investigation of technical structures and their material properties in production or quality assurance, or in the security sector, for example, to control visitors, passengers or luggage and in other areas.
- Simple sonography devices may be the size of a portable small computer, e.g. a personal digital assistant, which includes both the transducer and the receiver, or are arranged as a whole systems on a mobile rack, which include both the measuring device and processing units for processing the received signals.
- the sonography does not require any special storage of the object to be examined, the patient or the technical structure or does not require data values from different spatial directions for generating image data, as described, for example, in US Pat. B. in current tomography methods are mandatory.
- Ultrasonography is thus an easy-to-use technique, which non-invasively allows the examination of internal structures of objects and provides fast results with manageable means.
- a disadvantage of ultrasonography is that the resulting output signals, for example image data, are calculated on the basis of scattered and optionally multiply reflected sound pulses and can thus comprise not inconsiderable artifacts and disturbing noise.
- Previous approaches to optimize the resulting output signals include conventional signal processing techniques for spatially smoothing or averaging the signals over a given period of time, as well as filtering certain frequencies. While these approaches provide better quality images, they often result in reduced spatial and structural accuracy of the output signals, and typically have poorer resolution.
- the object of the present invention is thus to further develop the sonography processing in such a way that the quality of the output signals is improved.
- the ultrasound method comprises receiving signals of reflected sound pulses of a sound source; and processing the received signals to produce an output signal, the processing comprising calculating a two-dimensional analytic signal.
- the inventive method is thus based on a reflection or scattering of sound pulses in the interior of an object to be examined, which are generated and emitted by a sound source. Differences in the possibly multiple reflection or scattering arise from inhomogeneities with different material or tissue properties inside the object.
- the signals of the sound pulses reflected back in the direction of a receiver are received by the latter and further processed into an output signal, for example a one, two, three or more dimensional, continuous or discrete output signal whose amplitudes represent intensity values, the image data represent or are interpretable as image data.
- a two-dimensional analytical signal is calculated for processing the received signals.
- the analytical signal is capable of dividing an underlying signal such that quantitative and qualitative information is present separately in two components or quantities, in particular as local phase data and local amplitude data. These quantities of the analytic signal are also invariant and equivariant and allow the extraction of structural information independent of brightness, intensity or amplitude, as well as a change in contrast in the underlying signal.
- the analytical signal can be used in a variety of signal processing applications, such as medical imaging, and the like. A. for registration and segmentation of objects, can be used advantageously.
- the two-dimensional analytic signal is based on a two-dimensional Hilbert transform of higher order whose first-order Fourier factors, also called Riesz transforms, are defined in frequency space as follows:
- Computing the two-dimensional analytic signal of a two-dimensional source signal / e L 2 (R 2 ) in spatial space comprises transforming the original signal into a signal representation F in frequency space, filtering the signal F in frequency space with a filter B and then transforming the filtered signal the Fourier factors of the Hilbert transform.
- filters and signals in the frequency domain with capital letters and their spatial equivalents in the spatial space with corresponding lower case letters are referred to here and throughout the following description.
- computing the two-dimensional analytic signal comprises calculating a filtered signal F p from the signal F with a filter B, signals F x and F y with the Hilbert transform of the first order H 1 as well as of signals, "Fx y and F yy with the Hilbert transform of second order H 2 , as follows:
- ⁇ 8> is the pointwise multiplication in the frequency domain and the filter B is preferably a bandpass filter. From the calculated two-dimensional analytical signal, the quantitative, qualitative and further derived information can be extracted.
- the two-dimensional analytical signal Due to the properties of the two-dimensional analytical signal, particularly strong intensity fluctuations of the received signals and thus brightness variations of the output signal can be compensated particularly advantageously, sturgeon artifacts are eliminated and structural le features in the output signal are highlighted.
- the computation of structural features from the two-dimensional analytic signal during the initial processing of the received signals results in a more accurate and consistent output signal.
- the calculation and application of the two-dimensional analytical signal in the final generation of the output signal allows a clearer delineation of local structures.
- the quality of the resulting image data can be significantly improved without decreasing the accuracy and resolution of the output signal.
- processing the received signals comprises demodulating the received signals and demodulating calculating an envelope based on the two-dimensional analytic signal.
- an information-bearing signal is extracted from the received signals, which represent a modulated carrier signal or a modulated carrier wave.
- the demodulation of the received signals may include decomposing, processing and composing frequency ranges of the received signal into an intermediate signal on the basis of which the envelope is calculated.
- the two-dimensional analytical signal can be calculated directly on the received signal or on a preprocessed signal which is generated from the received signal.
- the calculation of the envelope is calculated on quantitative information derived from the two-dimensional analytical signal.
- calculating the two-dimensional analytic signal comprises calculating a local amplitude of the received signals.
- the local amplitude represents quantitative information of the two-dimensional analytical signal and reflects structural features of the underlying signal.
- the individual Hilbert-transformed signal components of the two-dimensional analytical signal in the frequency space F p , F x , F y , F ⁇ , F ⁇ and F yy transformed back into the spatial space, the associated signal components in
- the calculation of the envelopes is done according to this embodiment on the local amplitude data and leads to an overall much improved envelope detection.
- the received signals comprise a plurality of scan lines, and the two-dimensional analytic signal is simultaneously calculated on the plurality of scan lines.
- the scanning lines are arranged one below the other in a lateral direction and the two-dimensional analytical signal is now calculated on the basis of this arrangement of the lines and columns.
- computing the two-dimensional analytic signal comprises applying one or more bandpass filters.
- the one or more bandpass filters may define the filter B for calculating the signal components of the two-dimensional analytic signal.
- the bandpass filters can be Poisson filters that produce a linear scaling space.
- the bandpass filters are log-Gabor filters whose frequency response is defined as where ⁇ 0 is the center frequency and £ / ty 0 defines the bandwidth of the filter.
- the one or more bandpass filters are arranged on a filter bank to uniformly cover a continuous region of a frequency spectrum and the two-dimensional analytic signal from a response of exactly one bandpass filter or from an accumulation of responses of the bandpass filters is calculated.
- the individual fil- ter arranged such that the frequency response of adjacent filters overlap such that a uniform coverage of the frequency spectrum is achieved.
- the bandpass filters may either individually flow into the filter function B in order to extract particularly interesting frequency spectra from the original signal and to base them on further processing, or the filter function B may be defined as a combination of several or all bandpass filters to more complex ones Frequency ranges in the further processing to take into account, for example, to exclude trouble-prone frequency bands.
- the bandwidth of the one or more bandpass filters is directional.
- the equilibrium between the influence of the individual directional components for example the lateral and the axial direction, can be adjusted and taken into account, in particular for a simultaneous calculation of the two-dimensional analytical signal on several scanning lines, in particular if a higher resolution or a smaller distance between data samples in one direction ,
- the axial direction is to be expected and thereby the calculation results could be interfered with.
- calculating the two-dimensional analytical signal comprises calculating a local orientation.
- processing the received signals to compute the output signal may include generating temporary image data on which the two-dimensional analytic signal is calculated.
- a local orientation ⁇ is calculated from the calculated two-dimensional analytical signal
- the sound source is an ultrasonic source
- the signals are high frequency signals
- the output signal comprises B-mode image data.
- the ultrasound source preferably generates sound in the frequency range between 16 kHz and 1.6 GHz, particularly preferably in the frequency range between 3.0 and 3.5 MHz.
- the output signal here is preferably a discrete one-, two- or three-dimensional signal whose intensity values for the individual spatial elements, so-called pixels or voxels, in luminance values. te can be implemented, which can be displayed as gray or color values on a display device.
- the above charge is further solved by a computer-readable medium having instructions stored thereon which, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to execute the method according to the invention.
- a sonography apparatus comprising a receiver for receiving signals of reflected sound pulses from a sound source; and a processing unit for processing the received signals to generate an output signal, wherein the processing unit calculates a two-dimensional analytic signal.
- the receiver and the sound source may be formed as separate units or preferably integrated in a unit or a transducer to simplify the operation of the device.
- the receiver and the processing unit may be formed as separate units, which communicate with each other via a data or signal connection or may be integrated in one unit.
- both the sound source, the receiver and the processing unit can be integrated in a portable unit.
- the processing unit can furthermore be a processor set up for processing the received signals, preferably a multi-core processor, wherein the respective cores are set up to carry out individual processing steps in parallel, for example the calculation of the two-dimensional analytical signal.
- a processor set up for processing the received signals preferably a multi-core processor, wherein the respective cores are set up to carry out individual processing steps in parallel, for example the calculation of the two-dimensional analytical signal.
- the processing unit comprises a demodulator for demodulating the received signals, wherein the demodulator computes an envelope based on the two-dimensional analytic signal.
- the demodulator may be implemented as a processor or processor core configured to demodulate signals, or may be implemented as a parameter-driven hardware circuit which extracts, based on the parameters, an information-bearing signal from a modulated carrier signal or a modulated carrier wave.
- the processing unit for calculating the two-dimensional analytic signal calculates a local amplitude of the received signals.
- the received signals comprise a plurality of scan lines and the processing unit calculates the two-dimensional analytic signal simultaneously on the plurality of scan lines.
- the processing unit may include a memory which latches the scan lines and which can be accessed by the processing unit to simultaneously calculate the analytic signal for all scan lines.
- the individual scan lines can be recorded with a time delay or can be detected simultaneously by providing a plurality of receivers and / or multiple sound sources.
- the processing unit for computing the two-dimensional analytic signal applies one or more bandpass filters.
- the one or more bandpass filters are arranged on a filterbank so as to uniformly cover a continuous area of a frequency spectrum and the processing unit obtains the two-dimensional analytic signal from a response of exactly one bandpass filter or from an accumulation of responses of the bandpass filters calculated.
- the individual bandpass filters of the filterbank may be preconfigured as a dedicated processing unit, such as a processor or a processor core, to filter one or more frequency ranges of an input signal.
- the bandpass filters are preferably Poisson filters or log Gabor filters.
- the bandwidth of the one or more bandpass filters is directional.
- the processing unit calculates a local orientation for calculating the two-dimensional analytic signal.
- the sound source is an ultrasonic source
- the signals are high-frequency signals
- the output signal represents B-mode image data.
- a sonography system is also provided which comprises a device according to the invention.
- FIG. 2 shows a filter bank with log Gabor filters and an ultrasound signal spectrum
- FIG 3 shows an ultrasonic processing process according to an embodiment of the present invention
- FIG. 5 shows effects of a method according to preferred embodiments of the present invention on generated image data of a head-neck ultrasound
- FIG. 7 shows portions of B-mode image data generated by conventional approaches and in accordance with embodiments of the present invention.
- FIG. 8 shows temporal image data and resulting biopsy needle image data processed in accordance with embodiments of the present invention.
- Figure 1 shows the magnitude of components of a two-dimensional Hilbert transform associated with a log Gabor filter in the frequency domain.
- the log Gabor filter is defined by a filter kernel B with a frequency response 101 in the frequency domain and results in filtered Hilbert-transformed first order signals H X ® B and H y l ⁇ S> B, 103 and 105, respectively, and filtered Hilbert-transformed second-order signals H ® B, ⁇ ⁇ ® B and H ⁇ ® B, 107, 109 and 1 1 1, where ® represents the pointwise multiplication in the frequency domain.
- the two-dimensional analytical signal is obtained by embedding in a three-dimensional projection space.
- This allows a distinction between geometric features (local orientation and local aperture angles) and structural features (local phase and local amplitude).
- the opening angle a which distinguishes features of different intrinsic dimensionality, is given as
- the homogeneous signal component ff, the signal f p in the projection space is defined as
- Fig. 2 shows a filter bank 201 with five log Gabor filters 203a-203e, shown as dashed lines, and an ultrasonic signal spectrum 205, the x-axis indicating the frequency in MHz.
- the ultrasonic signal spectrum 205 shown as a solid line was recorded at an ultrasound recording frequency of 3.3 MHz.
- any signal that is defined in a finite interval, that is, has a finite carrier can be represented, after periodic continuation, by a Fourier series that decomposes the signal into components of different frequencies, each having its own phase and amplitude.
- Direct application of the Hilbert transform to the original signal representing accumulation of local signals at different frequencies would therefore insufficiently extract the local features.
- the analytic signal would have to be calculated for infinitesimally small areas in the frequency domain, so-called Dirac deltas. Due to the uncertainty principle, however, this would lead to filters with an infinite carrier in space.
- bandpass filters can be used to locate both in the spatial domain and in the frequency domain. For example, differences of Poisson filter cores can be used to select frequencies, creating a linear scale space. Furthermore, log-Gabor filters may be preferred in sonography to achieve improved results. Since log-Gabor filters in space can not be described by a closed analytical expression, the filters are preferably used directly in the frequency domain, the frequency response being defined as
- An essential aspect of the design of filters is to arrange filters on a filter bank 201 such that adjacent filters overlap sufficiently to achieve uniform coverage of the frequency spectrum.
- the central frequencies may be 2.285 MHz, 2.629 MHz, 3.0 MHz, 3.47 MHz and 4.0 MHz.
- the further processing can be based on the signal of a certain scale, ie the response of a filter or bandpass filter, or the answers of several different or all scales can be taken into account in the further processing.
- a certain scale ie the response of a filter or bandpass filter, or the answers of several different or all scales can be taken into account in the further processing.
- FIG. 3 shows an ultrasound processing process or pipeline 301 according to an embodiment of the present invention, comprising receiving 303 reflected signals, demodulating 305 the received signals, and mapping 307 an intermediate signal to generate 309 an output signal, wherein demodulation 305 further comprises a Frequency analysis 31 1 of the received signal and based thereon envelope detection 313 has.
- signals of reflected sound pulses preferably radio frequency signals
- the analysis may comprise a frequency selection and composition and provides a discrete or continuous signal whose envelope is calculated in the following step 313.
- the envelope representing Signal (envelope signal) is subsequently mapped 307 to intensity values, for example by a non-linear mapping, which are used to generate 309 an output signal.
- the output signal can be any one, two, three or more dimensional signal that can be used to examine and evaluate the received signals.
- the output signal is a discrete two-dimensional signal having intensity values that can be represented as image data.
- other one- or three-dimensional, continuous or discrete output signals can also be generated for examination.
- the demodulation 305 extracts the information-bearing signal from a modulated carrier signal or a modulated carrier wave, i. H. from the received signals.
- the envelope detection 313 is based on a calculation of a local amplitude of a two-dimensional analytic signal calculated from the received signal.
- the received signal may be present as one or more spatially adjacent scan lines, whereby the analytic signal for the scan lines may be calculated separately.
- the two-dimensional analytic signal can be calculated on all scan lines simultaneously.
- the calculation of the two-dimensional analytical signal taking into account all scanning lines can in particular significantly improve the envelope recognition, since the signal is analyzed in its two-dimensional context, in which, in addition to axial information, also lateral information, ie those signal information, the belong to adjacent, laterally arranged scan lines.
- a balance between the influence of signal data in both the lateral and axial directions can be achieved by designing the bandpass filters accordingly, by defining the bandwidths of the bandpass filters in a directional manner, taking into account in particular the spacing of the scan lines or the axial signal resolution.
- the thus calculated envelope signal is then imaged 307 and used to generate 309 the output signal.
- the selected image may be any image that maps the envelope signal to intensities.
- linear or preferably non-linear transfer functions for example different spreading functions, root-based functions, monotonic transformations or characteristic-based transformations, can be used.
- different image processing operations may be used, such as histogram-based adjustment and equalization of the intensities, various threshold methods, and the use of local operators for smoothing, noise reduction, or highlighting local features.
- brightness-modulated B-mode image data are preferably used which represent an echo intensity of the received signals converted into brightness values and can thus be interpreted as a sectional image by the object to be examined.
- the invention is not limited to the generation of B-mode images and can be advantageously used in single or multi-dimensional ultrasound methods, for example in A-mode method, 3D ultrasound or 4D ultrasound.
- envelopes 401 and 403 were determined on the basis of a calculation of a one-dimensional analytic signal which, in the case of the envelope 403, is further filtered by the log Gabor filters shown in FIG.
- envelopes 405 and 407 show results of envelope detection based on application of a two-dimensional analytic signal, again, where the envelope 407 was calculated using the filter bank of FIG.
- FIG. 5 shows further results of the method according to embodiments of the present invention, wherein the two-dimensional image data generated in this case are shown.
- images 501 and 503 have been calculated on the basis of a one-dimensional analytic signal and images 505 and 507 by a two-dimensional analytic signal.
- the analytical signals underlying the calculation were filtered with the filters of FIG. 2.
- the results shown in Fig. 5, in accordance with the results of Fig. 4 show the positive effect of the filter bank on the resulting image data.
- the comparison of the filtered and the unfiltered images ie. H.
- the application of the two-dimensional analytic signal provides more accurate and consistent mapping of structures in images 505 and 507. This is particularly apparent from a circular structure 509 in the upper left corner of the image 507, which appears in the corresponding image 503, which was calculated with a one-dimensional analytic signal, only as an elliptical structure 51 1.
- FIG. 6 shows a correlation comparison for different envelope detection techniques for quantifying the differences in correlation between scan lines using a filtered or unfiltered, one-dimensional or two-dimensional analytic signal according to embodiments of the present invention.
- correlation coefficients averaged as black, hatched and white bars are calculated between the scanning lines by a distance of 1 (i.e., for adjacent scanning lines), 2 and 3, respectively, with the correlation coefficients averaged over 256 scanning lines of an image.
- the results of Fig. 6 again show the visually improved consistency of images calculated by means of a filtered two-dimensional analytical signal.
- FIG. 7 shows results of a simplified high-frequency signal-to-luminance signal conversion of amplitude images a with a logarithmic compression log (a + 25), with sections of the image data calculated according to different methods being images 701, 703, 705 and 707 are shown.
- the logarithmic compression ultimately leads to a compression of the values, and further information can be lost by discretizing the values, for example, to a discrete number range of 1 to 256 or to 2 16 numerical values or to another discrete number range.
- Images 701 and 703 and images 705 and 707 are each calculated with a one-dimensional analytic signal and a two-dimensional analytic signal, respectively.
- filtering was performed with filters as shown in FIG. The results of Fig.
- the image 707 calculated with a filtered two-dimensional analytic signal according to an embodiment of the present invention shows clearer structures and reduced noise. It will be understood by those skilled in the art that the B-mode image data shown in Figure 7 is different from those seen on conventional ultrasound systems because generally further image processing steps are employed to refine the final result. However, it is also clear that when comparable image processing operations are used for post-processing, the improvement visible in the images shown has a direct effect on any final image data and thus also leads to an improvement of the final image data.
- Fig. 8 shows results of calculation of B-mode images according to embodiments of the present invention.
- image 801 shows an intermediate signal imaged with an intensity map, which corresponds to a result of step 307 of FIG. 3, and in which the contours of a biopsy needle are already indistinctly recognizable.
- the intermediate signal can thus already be a B-mode image.
- a further improvement of the output signal can be achieved by an additional or alternative calculation of an analytic signal on the intermediate signal shown in the image 801. For this purpose, the local orientation of the analytical signal of the intermediate signal is calculated.
- Figure 803 shows the result of the calculation based on a one-dimensional analytic signal
- Figure 805 shows the result of the calculation based on a two-dimensional analytic signal. While Figure 803 allows only indistinct conclusions about the imaged biopsy needle, in Figure 805 clear structural information is visible, revealing the biopsy needle.
- the calculation of the two-dimensional analytical signal from an intensity-reflected intermediate signal thus enables a more accurate detection of local features. So- in particular, the quality of the results of downstream image processing steps and applications such. As registration, segmentation and feature recognition, which use local features as inputs, be significantly improved.
- the calculation of the two-dimensional analytical signal can be calculated according to the invention for the demodulation of the received signals of the reflected sound pulses or on intermediate signals and that both can be combined.
- a first two-dimensional analytical signal on the received signals of reflected sound pulses and a second two-dimensional analytical signal on an intermediate signal for generating an output signal can thus be calculated.
- the local amplitude for envelope detection is preferably calculated, and the local two-dimensional analytical signal is used to calculate local features in the output signal.
- the invention is thus not limited to a calculation of a two-dimensional analytical signal on certain intermediate signals, but may comprise the calculation of a plurality of two-dimensional analytical signals on a plurality of intermediate signals.
- the application and calculation of a two-dimensional analytic signal on both received signals has numerous advantages.
- the demodulation of the received signals with the two-dimensional analytic signal allows a more accurate extraction of structures, as the signal is analyzed in its natural two-dimensional context.
- the envelope detection based on the local amplitude of the two-dimensional analytical signal allows the generation of B-mode images with increased quality.
- the advantageous signal model of the two-dimensional analytical signal leads to a more precise recognition of local features in B-mode images.
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Application Number | Priority Date | Filing Date | Title |
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DE112011103567T DE112011103567A5 (de) | 2010-10-26 | 2011-10-25 | Anwendung eines zweidimensionalen analytischen Signals in der Sonographie |
US13/882,142 US20130315462A1 (en) | 2010-10-26 | 2011-10-25 | Use of a Two-Dimensional Analytical Signal in Sonography |
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WO2014066231A1 (en) * | 2012-10-26 | 2014-05-01 | Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics Inc. | Cell identification method and device, and urine analyzer |
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US9509977B2 (en) * | 2012-03-28 | 2016-11-29 | Olympus Corporation | Image processing system and microscope system including the same |
US8922802B2 (en) * | 2013-02-21 | 2014-12-30 | Ricoh Company, Ltd. | Method and system for halftoning using energy minimization |
JP6390145B2 (ja) * | 2014-04-09 | 2018-09-19 | コニカミノルタ株式会社 | 超音波画像診断装置及び超音波画像診断装置の作動方法 |
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WO2014066231A1 (en) * | 2012-10-26 | 2014-05-01 | Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics Inc. | Cell identification method and device, and urine analyzer |
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