Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080240526 | OBJECT RECOGNITION SYSTEM FOR MEDICAL IMAGING - An improved system and method (i.e. utility) for segmentation of medical images is provided. The utility fits an estimated boundary on a structure of interest in an automated selection and lifting process. The estimated boundary may be a model boundary that is generated actual boundaries of like structures. In one arrangement, the boundaries may be selected based on the age and/or ethnicity of a patient. In further arrangements, narrow band processing is performed to estimate the actual boundary of the structure of interest. | 10-02-2008 |
20080249403 | TRACKER HOLDER ASSEMBLY - Provided herein are devices and methods for mounting variously configured medical imaging probes to a tracker assembly for imaging applications. In one aspect, a tracker assembly provides multiple degrees of freedom for positioning a probe relative to a patient and/or maintaining a probe in a desired location for imaging purposes. The tracker generates location information that may be utilized as frame of reference information for acquired images. In another aspect a holding device allows for interfacing/holding differently configured probes in a common orientation to a predetermined frame of reference. | 10-09-2008 |
20090048515 | BIOPSY PLANNING SYSTEM - Guided biopsy is a commonly used method to remove suspicious tissues from an internal organ for pathological tests so that malignancy can be established. Provided herein are systems and methods (i.e., utilities) that allow for automated application of one or more predefined biopsy target plans to an acquired medical image including without limitation, an ultrasound prostate image. Due to different shapes and sizes of prostates as well as orientation of prostate with respect to an ultrasound probe during image, acquisition a simple prostate model (e.g., ellipse) with a fixed plan may not be sufficient. Accordingly, it has been determined that a deformable shape model with integrated biopsy target locations/sites may be fit to a prostate image to provide improved automated biopsy targeting. | 02-19-2009 |
20090103791 | IMAGE INTERPOLATION FOR MEDICAL IMAGING - Presented are systems and methods that allow for interpolation of a 3-D volume from arbitrarily oriented 2-D medical images. The interpolation of 3-D volume from arbitrarily oriented 2-D images reduces or eliminates most constraints on image acquisition thereby allowing for, inter alia, freehand manipulation of an image acquisition device (e.g. an ultrasound transducer). Related utilities involve the use of prior information about a specific object of interest to interpolate a surface (e.g., 3-D surface) of the object from limited information obtained from very few 2-D images. | 04-23-2009 |
20090118640 | BIOPSY PLANNING AND DISPLAY APPARATUS - Systems are provided for managing, planning and displaying the location of biopsy core sites across multiple same-patient visits or other stored biopsy plans to increase the confidence and accuracy of biopsy results. The systems may allow the operator to fuse multiple predefined and/or automatically generated biopsy core site plans in addition to previous biopsy sites with a current prostate image to assist in creating a final new biopsy core site plan. Further, the system may allow the operator to selectively view singular parts of the final plan to simplify the planning process. Further, the systems may assist the operator during the navigation phase of the biopsy by hiding biopsy core sites from the final plan that are not of immediate interest during the biopsy phase and thereby reducing clutter and distraction during biopsy sample acquisition. | 05-07-2009 |
20090324041 | APPARATUS FOR REAL-TIME 3D BIOPSY - A method and apparatus are disclosed for performing software guided prostate biopsy to extract cancerous tissue. The method significantly improves on the current system by accelerating all computations using a graphical processing unit (GPU) keeping the accuracy of biopsy target locations within tolerance. The result is the computation of target locations to guide biopsy using statistical priors of cancers from a large population, as well as based on previous biopsy locations for the same patient, and finally via mapping protocols with predefined needle configurations onto the patient's current ultrasound image. | 12-31-2009 |
20090326363 | FUSED IMAGE MODALITIES GUIDANCE - An improved system and method (i.e. utility) for registration of medical images is provided. The utility registers a previously obtained volume onto an ultrasound volume during an ultrasound procedure to produce a multimodal image. The multimodal image may be used to guide a medical procedure, In one arrangement, the multimodal image includes MRI and/or MRSI information presented in the framework of a TRUS image during a TRUS procedure. | 12-31-2009 |
20090326554 | SUPPORT ASSEMBLY FOR A TRACKING ASSEMBLY AND MOUNTED TRANSRECTAL ULTRASOUND PROBE - Provided herein are devices and methods for supporting and positioning a tracking assembly for mounting variously configured medical devices for prostate imaging, biopsy, and other therapeutic applications. In one aspect, a support assembly provides multiple degrees of freedom for positioning a tracking assembly and mounted probe relative to a patient on a patient support structure such as an examination table or a gurney bed and/or maintaining a tracking assembly and mounted probe in a desired location throughout the rendering of imaging, biopsy, or other therapeutic procedures. | 12-31-2009 |
20090326555 | SUPPORT ASSEMBLY FOR A TRACKING ASSEMBLY AND MOUNTED TRANSRECTAL ULTRASOUND PROBE - Provided herein are devices and methods for supporting and positioning a tracking assembly for mounting variously configured medical devices for prostate imaging, biopsy, and other therapeutic applications. In one aspect, a support assembly provides multiple degrees of freedom for positioning a tracking assembly and mounted probe relative to a patient on a patient support structure such as an examination table or a gurney bed and/or maintaining a tracking assembly and mounted probe in a desired location throughout the rendering of imaging, biopsy, or other therapeutic procedures. | 12-31-2009 |
20100001996 | APPARATUS FOR GUIDING TOWARDS TARGETS DURING MOTION USING GPU PROCESSING - A method and apparatus using a graphics processing unit (GPU) are disclosed for three-dimensional (3D) imaging and continuously updating organ shape and internal points for guiding targets during motion. It is suitable for image-guided surgery or operations because the speed of guidance is achieved close to video rate. The system incorporates different methods of rigid and non-rigid registration using the parallelism of GPU processing that allows continuous updates in substantially real-time. | 01-07-2010 |
20100004526 | ABNORMALITY FINDING IN PROJECTION IMAGES - The present invention includes a utility for determining the severity of a stenosis in a blood vessel. In one aspect, a method for improving DSA image quality includes: (1) registration of the mask and bolus images prior to subtracting procedure to reduce the artifacts from misalignment; (2) enhancement of the registered DSA image by an anisotropic diffusion technique and a nonlinear normalization technique; and (3) detecting the boundary of blood vessel and quantitatively measuring percentage stenosis, which may be done automatically. | 01-07-2010 |
20100004530 | APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR POSITION SENSING - An improved apparatus and method for position sensing of a medical tracker device are presented. The apparatus and method are designed to constrain, rotate, and track the position of a medical tool. o improve the position sensing of the tracker, a joint that provides two degrees of freedom may use a revolute gear pair together with a rotary sensor for angular motion sensing and a sliding/prismatic assembly together with a linear magnetic sensor for linear position sensing. Thus, the linear motion sensing and the angular motion sensing are decoupled. | 01-07-2010 |
20100016710 | PROSTATE TREATMENT APPARATUS - The presented invention aims to address these and/or additional issues by providing a tracked grid for brachytherapy applications that can adjust to changes in the prostate between original image acquisition. The grid is allowed to be moved around and even rotated under tracked conditions, such that it can be maneuvered to align with any target region. A virtual 3-D grid is displayed on a computer with respect to the actual anatomy of the patient. The tracked grid can be moved relative to the virtual 3-D grid, such that the brachytherapy, cryo therapy or any other type of image guided therapy may be performed in real 3-D or even 4-D, when motion compensation is embedded during the procedure. | 01-21-2010 |
20100172559 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROSTATE BIOPSY - The invention presents tools to improve a 3-D image aided biopsy or treatment procedure for prostate gland by providing additional functionality and additional visual cues on an output image of the prostate, which may be generated substantially in real-time. The tools include i) the identification of various parts of prostate to classify as per regular classification in pathological reports, ii) Computing and displaying the insertion depth of needle with respect to a selected target point during the procedure, iii) Computing and displaying the distance from needle tip to prostate surface following a procedure and, iv) Calibration for misalignment of a 2-D imaging transducer when used under tracked motion for a procedure. | 07-08-2010 |
20110257505 | ATHEROMATIC?: IMAGING BASED SYMPTOMATIC CLASSIFICATION AND CARDIOVASCULAR STROKE INDEX ESTIMATION - Characterization of carotid atherosclerosis and classification of plaque into symptomatic or asymptomatic along with the risk score estimation are key steps necessary for allowing the vascular surgeons to decide if the patient has to definitely undergo risky treatment procedures that are needed to unblock the stenosis. This application describes a statistical (a) Computer Aided Diagnostic (CAD) technique for symptomatic versus asymptomatic plaque automated classification of carotid ultrasound images and (b) presents a cardiovascular risk score computation. We demonstrate this for longitudinal Ultrasound, CT, MR modalities and extendable to 3D carotid Ultrasound. The on-line system consists of Atherosclerotic Wall Region estimation using AtheroEdge™ for longitudinal Ultrasound or Athero-CTView™ for CT or Athero-MRView from MR. This greyscale Wall Region is then fed to a feature extraction processor which uses the combination: (a) Higher Order Spectra; (b) Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT); (c) Texture and (d) Wall Variability. Another combination uses: (a) Local Binary Pattern; (b) Law's Mask Energy and (c) Wall Variability. The output of the Feature Processor (from either of the combination) is fed to the Classifier which is trained off-line from the Database of similar Atherosclerotic Wall Region images. The off-line Classifier using combination one is trained from the significant features from (a) Higher Order Spectra; (b) Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT); (c) Texture and (d) Wall Variability, selected using t-test. Using the combination two, the off-line Classifier uses grayscale features: (a) Local Binary Pattern; (b) Law's Mask Energy and (c) Wall Variability. Symptomatic ground truth information about the training, patients is drawn from cross modality imaging such as CT or MR or 3D ultrasound in the form of 0 or 1. Support Vector Machine (SVM) supervised classifier of varying kernel functions is used off-line for training. The Atheromatic™ system is also demonstrated for Radial Basis Probabilistic Neural Network (RBPNN), or Nearest Neighbor (KNN) classifier or Decision Trees (DT) Classifier for symptomatic versus asymptomatic plaque automated classification. The obtained training parameters are then used to evaluate the test set. The system also yields the cardiovascular risk score value on the basis of the four set of wall features in combination one and risk score using combination two. | 10-20-2011 |
20110257527 | ULTRASOUND CAROTID MEDIA WALL CLASSIFICATION AND IMT MEASUREMENT IN CURVED VESSELS USING RECURSIVE REFINEMENT AND VALIDATION - A computer-implemented system and method for intima-media thickness (IMT) measurements using a validation embedded segmentation method. Various embodiments include receiving biomedical imaging data and patient demographic data corresponding to a current scan of a patient; checking the biomedical imaging data in real-time to determine if an artery of the patient has a calcium deposit in a proximal wall of the artery; acquiring arterial data of the patient as a combination of longitudinal B-mode and transverse B-mode data; using a data processor to automatically recognize the artery by embedding anatomic information; using the data processor to calibrate a region of interest around the automatically recognized artery; automatically computing the weak or missing edges of intima-media and media-adventitia walls using labeling and connectivity; and determining the intima-media thickness (IMT) of an arterial wall of the automatically recognized artery. | 10-20-2011 |
20110257545 | IMAGING BASED SYMPTOMATIC CLASSIFICATION AND CARDIOVASCULAR STROKE RISK SCORE ESTIMATION - Characterization of carotid atherosclerosis and classification of plaque into symptomatic or asymptomatic along with the risk score estimation are key steps necessary for allowing the vascular surgeons to decide if the patient has to definitely undergo risky treatment procedures that are needed to unblock the stenosis. This application describes a statistical (a) Computer Aided Diagnostic (CAD) technique for symptomatic versus asymptomatic plaque automated classification of carotid ultrasound images and (b) presents a cardiovascular stroke risk score computation. We demonstrate this for longitudinal Ultrasound, CT, MR modalities and extendable to 3D carotid Ultrasound. The on-line system consists of Atherosclerotic Wall Region estimation using AtheroEdge™ for longitudinal Ultrasound or Athero-CTView™ for CT or Athero-MRView from MR. This greyscale Wall Region is then fed to a feature extraction processor which computes: (a) Higher Order Spectra; (b) Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT); (c) Texture and (d) Wall Variability. The output of the Feature Processor is fed to the Classifier which is trained off-line from the Database of similar Atherosclerotic Wall Region images. The off-line Classifier is trained from the significant features from (a) Higher Order Spectra; (b) Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT); (c) Texture and (d) Wall Variability, selected using t-test. Symptomatic ground truth information about the training patients is drawn from cross modality imaging such as CT or MR or 3D ultrasound in the form of 0 or 1. Support Vector Machine (SVM) supervised classifier of varying kernel functions is used off-line for training. The Atheromatic™ system is also demonstrated for Radial Basis Probabilistic Neural Network (RBPNN), or Nearest Neighbor (KNN) classifier or Decision Trees (DT) Classifier for symptomatic versus asymptomatic plaque automated classification. The obtained training parameters are then used to evaluate the test set. The system also yields the cardiovascular stroke risk score value on the basis of the four set of wall features. | 10-20-2011 |
20110299753 | MULTI-RESOLUTION EDGE FLOW APPROACH TO VASCULAR ULTRASOUND FOR INTIMA-MEDIA THICKNESS (IMT) MEASUREMENT - A computer-implemented system and method for fast, reliable, and automated embodiments for using a multi-resolution edge flow approach to vascular ultrasound for intima-media thickness (IMT) measurement. Various embodiments include receiving biomedical imaging data and patient demographic data corresponding to a current scan of a patient; checking the biomedical imaging data in real-time to determine if an artery of the patient has a calcium deposit in a proximal wall of the artery; acquiring arterial data of the patient as a combination of longitudinal B-mode and transverse B-mode data; using a data processor to automatically recognize the artery; using the data processor to calibrate a region of interest around the automatically recognized artery; automatically computing the weak or missing edges of intima-media and media-adventitia walls using edge flow, labeling and connectivity; and determining the intima-media thickness (IMT) of an arterial wall of the automatically recognized artery. | 12-08-2011 |
20110299754 | VALIDATION EMBEDDED SEGMENTATION METHOD FOR VASCULAR ULTRASOUND IMAGES - A computer-implemented system and method for intima-media thickness (IMT) measurements using a validation embedded segmentation method. Various embodiments include receiving biomedical imaging data and patient demographic data corresponding to a current scan of a patient; checking the biomedical imaging data in real-time to determine if an artery of the patient has a calcium deposit in a proximal wall of the artery; acquiring arterial data of the patient as a combination of longitudinal B-mode and transverse B-mode data; using a data processor to automatically recognize the artery by embedding anatomic information; using the data processor to calibrate a region of interest around the automatically recognized artery; automatically computing the weak or missing edges of intima-media and media-adventitia walls using edge flow, labeling and connectivity; and determining the intima-media thickness (IMT) of an arterial wall of the automatically recognized artery. | 12-08-2011 |
20120059261 | Dual Constrained Methodology for IMT Measurement - A computer-implemented system and method for intima-media thickness (IMT) measurements using a validation embedded segmentation method. Various embodiments include receiving biomedical imaging data and patient demographic data corresponding to a current scan of a patient; checking the biomedical imaging data in real-time to determine if an artery of the patient has a atherosclerosis deposit in a proximal wall of the artery; acquiring arterial data of the patient as a combination of longitudinal B-mode or M-mode and transverse B-mode or M-mode data; using a data processor to automatically recognize the artery by embedding anatomic information; using the data processor to calibrate a region of interest around the automatically recognized artery; automatically computing the lumen intima and media-adventita borders by evolving the initial lumen intima and initial media-adventita borders constrained by distances based on polyline method or centerline method; and determining the intima-media thickness (IMT) of an arterial wall of the automatically recognized artery. | 03-08-2012 |
20120078099 | Imaging Based Symptomatic Classification Using a Combination of Trace Transform, Fuzzy Technique and Multitude of Features - A statistical (a) Computer Aided Diagnostic (CAD) technique is described for symptomatic versus asymptomatic plaque automated classification of carotid ultrasound images and (b) presents a cardiovascular risk score computation. We demonstrate this for longitudinal Ultrasound, CT, MR modalities and extendable to 3D carotid Ultrasound. The on-line system consists of Atherosclerotic Wall Region estimation using AtheroEdge™ for longitudinal Ultrasound or Athero-CTView™ for CT or Athero-MRView from MR. This greyscale Wall Region is then fed to a feature extraction processor which uses the combination: (a) Higher Order Spectra; (b) Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT); (c) Texture and (d) Wall Variability. Another combination uses: (a) Local Binary Pattern; (b) Law's Mask Energy and (c) Wall Variability. Another combination uses: (a) Trace Transform; (b) Fuzzy Grayscale Level Co-occurrence Matrix and (c) Wall Variability. The output of the Feature Processor is fed to the Classifier which is trained off-line. | 03-29-2012 |
20120087557 | BIOPSY PLANNING AND DISPLAY APPARATUS - Systems are provided for managing, planning and displaying the location of biopsy core sites across multiple same-patient visits or other stored biopsy plans to increase the confidence and accuracy of biopsy results. The systems may allow the operator to fuse multiple predefined and/or automatically generated biopsy core site plans in addition to previous biopsy sites with a current prostate image to assist in creating a final new biopsy core site plan. Further, the system may allow the operator to selectively view singular parts of the final plan to simplify the planning process. Further, the systems may assist the operator during the navigation phase of the biopsy by hiding biopsy core sites from the final plan that are not of immediate interest during the biopsy phase and thereby reducing clutter and distraction during biopsy sample acquisition. | 04-12-2012 |
20120163693 | Non-Invasive Imaging-Based Prostate Cancer Prediction - A system (UroImage™) is an imaging based system for predicting if the prostate is cancerous or not using non-invasive ultrasound. The method is an on-line system where region of interest processor computes the capsule region in the Urological image. The feature extraction processor finds the significant features such as non-linear higher order spectra and high pass filter discrete wavelet based features, and combines them. The on-line classifier processor uses along with the training-based parameters to estimate and predicate if the patient's prostate is cancerous or not. The UroImage™ also introduces the applicability of this system for MR, CT or fusion of these modalities with ultrasound for predicting cancer. | 06-28-2012 |
20120177275 | Coronary Artery Disease Prediction using Automated IMT - A system (AtheroEdgeLink™) that links and predicts the Syntax Score for Coronary Artery Disease Patients using carotid IMT in Ultrasound. Ultrasound is acquired for the carotids and CIMT is estimated using AtheroEdge™. For the same images, plaque burden or plaque score is estimated. Syntax score is estimated from cardiac X-ray angiograms. The AtheroEdgeLink™ technique correlates between CIMT computed using AtheroEdge™ and Syntax Score. The system AtheroEdgeLink™ can help compute the ROC area under the curve (Az) between CIMT and Syntax Score for Coronary Artery Disease patients. Such a system can also help to find the specificity of finding the threshold on CIMT for associating the presence of Coronary Artery Disease. | 07-12-2012 |
20120203094 | Mobile Architecture Using Cloud for Data Mining Application - Three tier architecture for image-based diagnosis and monitoring application using Cloud is described. The presentation layer is run on the tablet (mobile device), while the business and persistence layer runs on a single cloud or distributed on different Clouds in a multi-tenancy and multi-user application. Such architecture is used for automated data mining application for computing (a) cardiovascular risk, stroke risk using IMT measurement, plaque characterization, (b) computing diagnostic index for benign vs. malignant tissue for ovarian cancer classification (c) benign vs. malignant tissue characterization for prostate cancer and (d) classification of fatty liver disease vs. normal cases. The Architecture is for data mining application. | 08-09-2012 |
20120220875 | Mobile Architecture Using Cloud for Hashimoto's Thyroiditis Disease Classification - Hashimoto's Thyroiditis (HT) is the most common type of inflammation of the thyroid gland and accurate diagnosis of HT would be advantageous in predicting thyroid failure. The application presents three tier architecture for image-based diagnosis and monitoring application using Cloud is described. The presentation layer is run on the tablet (mobile device), while the business and persistence layer runs on a single cloud or distributed on different Clouds in a multi-tenancy and multi-user application. Such architecture is used for automated data mining application for diagnosis of Hashimoto's Thyroiditis (HT) Disease using ultrasound. | 08-30-2012 |
20120316442 | Hypothesis Validation of Far Wall Brightness in Arterial Ultrasound - Automated IMT system hypothesize that far wall of the common carotid artery has the highest intensity. In this current application, we verify that this hypothesis holds true for B-mode or RF-mode longitudinal ultrasound images of the carotid wall. The methodology consists of generating the composite image (arithmetic sum of images) from the database by first registering the carotid image frames with respect to a nearly straight carotid artery frame from the same database using (a) B-spline based non-rigid registration and (b) affine registration. Prior to registration, we segment the carotid artery lumen using a level set based algorithm followed by morphological image processing. The binary lumen images are registered and the transformations are applied to the original grayscale CCA images. These B-mode or RF-mode ultrasound images are then used for IMT computation using automated methods which hypothesize that far wall has the brightest intensity distribution. | 12-13-2012 |
20130030281 | Hashimotos Thyroiditis Detection and Monitoring - Hashimoto's Thyroiditis (HT) is the most common type of inflammation of the thyroid gland and accurate diagnosis of HT would be advantageous in predicting thyroid failure. The application presents a three tier architecture for image-based diagnosis and a monitoring application using a network cloud. The presentation layer is run on the tablet (e.g., a mobile device), while the business and persistence layers run on a single network cloud or distributed on different network clouds in a multi-tenancy and multi-user application. Such three tier architecture is used for automated data mining application for diagnosis of Hashimoto's Thyroiditis (HT) Disease using ultrasound. | 01-31-2013 |
20130116548 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROSTATE BIOPSY - The invention presents tools to improve a 3-D image aided biopsy or treatment procedure for prostate gland by providing additional functionality and additional visual cues on an output image of the prostate, which may be generated substantially in real-time. The tools include i) the identification of various parts of prostate to classify as per regular classification in pathological reports, ii) Computing and displaying the insertion depth of needle with respect to a selected target point during the procedure, iii) Computing and displaying the distance from needle tip to prostate surface following a procedure and, iv) Calibration for misalignment of a 2-D imaging transducer when used under tracked motion for a procedure. | 05-09-2013 |