JPH0744932B2 - Ultrasonic image display device - Google Patents

Description

Description: TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to an ultrasonic image display device, and more particularly to an ultrasonic image display device that displays a three-dimensional region inside a subject by three cross sections that are orthogonal to each other.

[Prior Art] An ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus using ultrasonic waves is well known and widely used for in-vivo diagnosis and the like in medicine.

This ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus sends an ultrasonic wave into a living body and forms a tomographic image in the subject based on the intensity (echo intensity) of a reflected wave from the living body. The tomographic image is displayed by using the B-mode display in which the two are displayed in correspondence with each other.

In recent years, in order to capture the ultrasonic echo information of the three-dimensional region inside the subject, for example, Japanese Patent Application No. 1-324957 has proposed an ultrasonic probe for capturing three-dimensional data. An ultrasonic three-dimensional image display device has been proposed that three-dimensionally displays echo information of ultrasonic waves from an ultrasonic probe for data acquisition.

This ultrasonic three-dimensional imaging device stereoscopically expresses the captured ultrasonic echo information of the three-dimensional region inside the subject by using, for example, grayscale display. It is possible to three-dimensionally display the affected area that cannot be formed by the diagnostic device.

Therefore, according to such an ultrasonic three-dimensional image display device, an affected area or the like can be grasped three-dimensionally, and its realization is desired as improving the diagnostic accuracy in medical treatment.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] However, in the above-described ultrasonic three-dimensional image display device,
At present, it takes a lot of processing time to form the three-dimensional image, and thus there is a problem that it is difficult to quickly display the affected area in the living body.

That is, in the ultrasonic three-dimensional image display device, it is necessary to reconstruct the ultrasonic echo information of the three-dimensional region inside the subject from the acquired data array to the data array of the three-dimensional image, and such a complicated tertiary The processing time delay of the hardware based on the original coordinate conversion has been an obstacle to shortening the time from data acquisition to image display.

Further, in the conventional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus, since the inside of the subject is displayed as a two-dimensional tomographic image, the processing time is short and it is possible to display in almost real time. Therefore, there has been a demand for an ultrasonic image display device capable of three-dimensionally grasping the inside of the subject and capable of forming and displaying an image more quickly.

The present invention has been made in view of the above conventional problems,
An object of the invention is to provide an ultrasonic image display device capable of displaying the inside of a subject three-dimensionally and quickly.

[Means for Solving the Problems] In order to achieve the above object, according to the present invention, an array transducer forming a fan-shaped data acquisition region is moved in a direction orthogonal to an electronic scanning direction so that a top surface and a bottom surface are spherical. An ultrasonic probe forming a trapezoidal three-dimensional data capturing area, a three-dimensional data memory storing ultrasonic echo information captured by the ultrasonic probe, and the three-dimensional data capturing area. Cutting plane position setting means for individually setting respective positions of the three planes, ie, the plane regular cutting plane, the plane side cutting plane, and the spherical upper cutting plane, which are three orthogonal planes to be cut, and each of the cuts set at the positions. Tomographic image forming means for reading the ultrasonic echo information of the surface from the three-dimensional data memory and forming an ultrasonic tomographic image for each cut surface, and a display for simultaneously displaying the formed ultrasonic tomographic images. And a cutting surface position display means for displaying the position of the other cutting surface in a straight line or a curved line on the ultrasonic tomographic image of each cutting surface displayed by the display means. And

[Operation] According to the above configuration, the three-dimensional region inside the subject is image-displayed as three orthogonal cut surfaces, that is, a normal cut surface, a side cut surface, and an upper cut surface.

Therefore, the ultrasonic tomographic image of each cut surface is the same as the display (B mode display) on the conventional apparatus, but, for example, by aligning the orthogonal points of the three surfaces with the center of the affected area, the affected area can be displayed. It becomes possible to grasp three-dimensionally.

That is, it is possible to spatially recognize the size and volume of the affected part and the like and the positional relationship with other organs.

Here, in forming an ultrasonic tomographic image of each cut surface,
Since it is not necessary to perform three-dimensional coordinate conversion or the like in the ultrasonic three-dimensional image display device, it is possible to quickly form each image.

Further, by providing the cut surface position display means, the positional relationship between the displayed three cut surface images and the other cut surface images can be recognized.

[Embodiment] A preferred embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows a preferred embodiment of the ultrasonic image display device according to the present invention. In this embodiment, the ultrasonic image processing device 10 according to the present invention captures ultrasonic echo data. It is connected to the ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus 20. Of course, it can also be incorporated in the ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus 20.

In FIG. 1, as the ultrasonic probe 22 provided in the ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus 20, the ultrasonic probe for taking in three-dimensional data is used in this embodiment.

This ultrasonic probe for taking in three-dimensional data has an array transducer composed of a plurality of ultrasonic transducers arranged in a straight line, and further, the electronic scanning direction of this array transducer (the ultrasonic transducers). It has a mechanical scanning mechanism that moves the array transducer in a direction orthogonal to the (arrangement direction of). Further, a position detector is provided to identify the mechanical scanning position.

That is, according to the ultrasonic probe for taking in the three-dimensional data, it is possible to take in the echo data in the three-dimensional region inside the object including the three-dimensional coordinate position of the data.

A transmission signal is supplied from the transmission circuit 24 to the ultrasonic probe 22, and a reception signal from the ultrasonic probe 22 is sent to the reception circuit 26.

Further, the ultrasonic probe 22 is supplied with predetermined electronic scanning signals and mechanical scanning signals from the probe scanning unit 28.

The output of the receiving circuit 26 is input to the A / D converter 32 provided in the ultrasonic image display device 10 according to the present invention, where A
After the / D conversion is performed, the data is written in the three-dimensional data memory 34.

The three-dimensional data memory 34 is for storing echo data of the three-dimensional region in the subject taken in by the ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus 20, and writing of each echo data is controlled by the write address calculation unit 36. ing.

That is, the write address calculation unit 36 specifies the memory address corresponding to the three-dimensional coordinate position of each echo data.

The write address calculation unit 36 is supplied with the above-mentioned scanning control signal from the probe scanning unit 28, and the three-dimensional coordinate position of each echo data is specified by this scanning control signal.

The read address calculation unit 38 provided in the ultrasonic image display device 10 supplies a read address signal to the above-mentioned three-dimensional data memory 34.

Further, the central control unit 40 controls the read address calculation unit 38 and also controls the following devices described later.

In the figure, a cutting plane position controller 41 is composed of a controller having three dials in this embodiment, and the cutting plane position of a cutting plane display image described later can be set. In other words, the operator can rotate the three dials X, Y, Z provided on the cut surface position controller 41 to display a desired cut surface in the three-dimensional region inside the subject.

In the figure, a frame buffer memory 42 temporarily stores image data for one screen of an image to be displayed. In the present embodiment, since the displayed image is displayed in color, the frame buffer memory 42 also stores the color data of each image.

The image signals R, G, and B output from the frame buffer memory 42 are input to D / A converters 44, 46, and 48, respectively, D / A converted, and then displayed in color on the display unit 50. It

The ultrasonic image display apparatus according to the present embodiment has the above-mentioned configuration, and the display principle and operation will be described below.

FIG. 2 shows the concept of the three-dimensional region inside the subject taken in by the ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus 20. put it here,
The three-dimensional area is shown as a data acquisition area V.

In the present embodiment, the data acquisition region V has a substantially trapezoidal shape, and other than this, depending on the scanning method of the ultrasonic probe 22, for example, a shape such as a cube or a triangular pyramid can be considered.

In the above-described ultrasonic three-dimensional image display device, the data acquisition area V is displayed in black and white as an image as it is, but in the present invention, the data acquisition area V is cut by three orthogonal cutting planes. The echo information of each cut surface is displayed in B mode.

Here, the cut surface (II) viewed from the front (X direction) is the normal cut surface, and the cut surface (III) viewed from the side surface (Y direction) is the side cut surface, and viewed from above (Z direction) in the figure. The cut (I) is taken as the upper cut surface.

The coordinate position of each cut surface can be set to a desired position by the cut surface position controller 41.

That is, by turning the X knob of the cutting plane position controller 41, the position of the cutting plane can be changed forward or backward, and the cutting plane of a desired X coordinate can be designated. This also applies to the side cut surface and the upper cut surface.

FIG. 3 shows a memory space Q which is a concept when the data acquisition area V shown in FIG. 2 is stored in the three-dimensional data memory 34. Here, each echo data is designated by a three-dimensional address (X, Y, Z) in the memory space Q.

When extracting the echo data of the normal cutting plane from this memory space Q, as shown in (A), the X coordinate is specified, and the echo data in the cutting plane passing through the specified X coordinate is addressed. It is done by That is, the X coordinate is fixed, the other Y coordinate and Z coordinate are scanned, and the echo data in the plane is taken out.

Further, as shown in (B), when the echo data of the side cut surface is extracted, the Y coordinate in the memory space Q is specified, and the echo data of the cut surface passing through the specified Y coordinate is extracted.

Then, as shown in (C), when the echo data of the upper cut surface is extracted, the Z coordinate is specified, and the echo data on the upper cut surface of the spherical shape passing through the Z coordinate is extracted. Here, in this embodiment, the Z coordinate has a correlation with the reception time of the ultrasonic beam.

As described above, the reading of the echo data of each cut surface from the three-dimensional data memory 34 is performed in the X, Y, Z in the memory space Q.
Since it is only necessary to identify one of the coordinates and extract the echo data of the cutting plane passing through the identified coordinate, a simple process is possible.

Then, the ultrasonic tomographic image of each cut surface to be displayed, since each echo data read from the three-dimensional data memory 34 is converted into luminance information and can be displayed with the data array as it is, the above-mentioned three-dimensional coordinates. Data reading and image formation can be performed quickly and easily without requiring complicated processing such as conversion processing.

FIG. 4 shows a display example in the ultrasonic image display device according to the present invention. In the present embodiment, the tomographic image of each cutting surface is displayed on the same screen, and further, the cutting position display image (IV) is displayed in order to spatially recognize the position of each cutting surface.

In FIG. 4, (I) is an upper cutting plane image, in which the mutually orthogonal cutting lines L _x and L _y for indicating the positions of other normal cutting planes and side cutting planes are the same in the image. Is displayed in.

Further, in (II), a normal cutting plane image is shown, and in this case, the cutting lines L _y and L _z are displayed as in the above upper cutting plane.

Further, (III) is a side cut surface image, and the cut lines L _x and L _z are displayed in the same manner as above.

That is, by displaying the cutting line L in each cutting surface, mutual relations can be recognized, and for example, the affected part position and the like can be grasped spatially.

Further, as described above, the cutting position display image (IV) is shown in the display screen, and in the present embodiment, the cutting position display image displays the frame (frame) of the data acquisition area V, and Along with the frame, as described above, the cutting lines L _x , L
3D display of _y and L _z .

Therefore, according to such a display, it is possible to confirm by a cut surface display in which the specific portion in the data acquisition region V is cut from three directions orthogonal to each other. In particular, this has the advantage that the size and volume of the affected area can be spatially confirmed as well as the positional relationship with other organs.

Next, the operation of the ultrasonic image display device according to the present invention will be described with reference to FIG.

In FIG. 5, in step 101, the ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus 20
The echo data of the three-dimensional region inside the subject is acquired by using the and and stored in the three-dimensional data memory 34.

In step 102, the cutting plane position controller 41 is used to set the position of each cutting plane in the captured three-dimensional area.

In step 103, the cutting position display image (I
V) is formed and stored in the frame buffer memory 42. Here, the cutting lines in the cutting position display image are also formed and stored.

In this embodiment, the wire frame 200 of the cutting position display image (IV) is displayed in white, L _x is yellow, L _y is blue, and L _z is green.

In step 104, it is determined whether or not the X, Y, and Z set in step 102 have changed. That is, in the display example shown in FIG. 4, since X, Y, and Z can be changed independently, for example, if only X is changed, only the tomographic image (II) of the normal cutting plane is changed. be able to.

If it is determined in step 104 that X has changed, or if the initial image formation is performed, the process proceeds to step 105.

In this step 105, as described with reference to FIG. 3A, the echo data of the cutting plane passing through the set X coordinate is read from the three-dimensional data memory and stored in the frame buffer memory 42.

Here, since each echo data stored in the three-dimensional data memory 34 has echo intensity information, in this embodiment, the echo data is directly transferred from the three-dimensional data memory 34 to the frame buffer memory 42. .

By the way, in this frame buffer memory 42,
The address corresponds to each pixel of the displayed image, and color information is also stored at the same time.

In step 106, it is judged whether or not there is a change in Y. If there is a change in Y, or in the case of initial image formation, the process moves to step 107.

In this step 107, as shown in FIG.
Each echo data of the side cut surface is read from the three-dimensional data memory 34 and stored in the frame buffer memory 42 as in step 105.

Further, in the same manner as described above, in steps 108 and 109,
The upper cut surface image is formed after it is determined whether or not Z has changed.

Then, in step 110, the frame buffer memory 42
The stored image information is read from and displayed on the display device 50. Here, the display example is the one shown in FIG.

In step 111, it is judged whether or not the ultrasonic image display is continued, and if it is not completed, the steps from step 102 are sequentially repeated.

That is, by turning each dial of the cut surface position controller 41, it is possible to obtain a cut surface image at a desired position within the data acquisition area V.

As described above, the ultrasonic image display device according to the present invention does not stereoscopically represent the captured ultrasonic echo data of the three-dimensional internal region of the subject, but displays it as three orthogonal cross sections. Thus, it is possible to provide information for three-dimensionally grasping the shape position of the affected area or the like from the displayed three cut surface images while performing the rapid processing.

In particular, since a cutting line is displayed simultaneously on each cut surface image, the cut surface images can be checked in association with each other, and the spatial recognition of the affected area can be improved.

In the present embodiment, the upper cut surface has a spherical shape because the address (Z) is set in accordance with the reception time of the reflected wave. However, a correction circuit may be further provided to reconstruct the plane image. , In this case, while the image processing time becomes long,
It is possible to obtain an upper cut surface image without distortion.

[Effects of the Invention] As described above, according to the ultrasonic image display device of the present invention, the three-dimensional region inside the subject can be displayed as three cross sections that are orthogonal to each other. It is possible to quickly form an image without requiring any arithmetic processing, and at the same time, it is possible to provide image information that enables three-dimensional grasping.

In particular, conventionally, because it was only a two-dimensional tomographic image, it was not possible to recognize the size and shape of the affected area, etc., in the ultrasonic image display device according to the present invention, the depth and height of the affected area, etc. Alternatively, the width and the like can be recognized by a three-dimensional image.

Further, by providing the cutting plane position display means, it is possible to easily confirm the mutual positional relationship between the displayed cutting plane images, and it is possible to further improve the three-dimensional grasp.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of an ultrasonic three-dimensional image display device according to the present invention, FIG. 2 is a conceptual diagram showing the concept of a data acquisition area, and FIG. 3 is a conceptual diagram showing the concept of a memory space. FIG. 4 is an explanatory view showing a display example, and FIG. 5 is a flow chart showing steps of ultrasonic image formation. 10 …… Ultrasonic image display device 34 …… Three-dimensional data memory 36 …… Write address calculation unit 38 …… Read address calculation unit 40 …… Central control unit 41 …… Cut plane position controller 42 …… Frame buffer memory 50… … Display V… Data capture area Q …… Memory space I …… Upper cutting plane II …… Normal cutting plane III …… Side cutting plane IV …… Cutting position display image

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. An array transducer forming a fan-shaped data acquisition region is moved in a direction orthogonal to an electronic scanning direction,
An ultrasonic probe forming a trapezoidal three-dimensional data acquisition region having a spherical upper surface and a bottom surface; a three-dimensional data memory storing ultrasonic echo information acquired by the ultrasonic probe; Cutting plane position setting means for individually setting respective positions of a plane normal cutting plane, a plane side cutting plane, and a spherical upper cutting plane, which are three orthogonal planes for cutting the original data acquisition region, and the position. The ultrasonic echo information of each set cut surface is read from the three-dimensional data memory, and a tomographic image forming unit that forms an ultrasonic tomographic image for each cut surface and each of the formed ultrasonic tomographic images are displayed simultaneously. And a cutting surface position displaying means for displaying the position of the other cutting surface in a straight line or a curved line on the ultrasonic tomographic image of each cutting surface displayed on the display means. Ultrasound image display comprising and.