Touchless input ultrasound control
AssigneeFujifilm Sonosite, Inc.
InventorDavinder S. Dhatt
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Abstract
A method and apparatus are disclosed herein for controlling an ultrasound machine using one or more touchless inputs. In one embodiment, the method for controlling operation of the ultrasound machine comprises obtaining one or more touchless inputs; determining one or more operations to control the ultrasound machine based on the one or more touchless inputs and machine state of the ultrasound machine; and controlling the ultrasound machine using the one or more operations.
Claims24
A method for controlling operation of an ultrasound machine, the method comprising:
- obtaining one or more touchless inputs, including lip reading by capturing images of lips, analyzing and matching the images of lips to a specific word or sequence of words;
- determining one or more operations to control the ultrasound machine based on the one or more touchless inputs, including the specific word or sequence of words from the lip reading, and machine state of the ultrasound machine, wherein determining the one or more operations is further based on captured audio information of the individual and comprises dynamically adjusting, based on an environment in which the ultrasound machine resides, weights associated with results of lip reading recognition and audio recognition to determine the one or more operations to control the ultrasound machine;
- and
- controlling the ultrasound machine using at least one of the one or more operations.
An apparatus comprising:
- a display screen;
- an ultrasound imaging subsystem coupled to the display to generate ultrasound images on the display screen;
- an ultrasound control subsystem coupled to control the imaging subsystem;
- one or more cameras to capture images of lip movements of an individual;
- a microphone to capture audio;
- a recognizer coupled to the one or more cameras to execute a lip recognition routine on captured images from the one or more cameras to perform lip reading and matching the lip reading to a specific word or sequence of words;
- and
- a command generator coupled to the recognizer and the control subsystem to determine one or more operations based on one or more touchless inputs from the recognizer, including the specific word or sequence of words, and microphone and machine state of the ultrasound machine received from the ultrasound control subsystem and send at least one of the one or more operations to control the ultrasound control subsystem, wherein to determine the one or more operations is further based on captured audio information of the individual and comprises dynamically adjusting, based on an environment in which the ultrasound machine resides, weights associated with results of lip reading recognition and audio recognition to determine the one or more operations to control the ultrasound machine.
An article of manufacture having one or more computer readable storage media storing instructions thereon which, when executed by a system, cause the system to perform a method for controlling operation of an ultrasound machine, the method comprising:
- obtaining one or more touchless inputs, including lip reading by capturing images of lips, analyzing and matching the images of lips to a specific word or sequence of words;
- determining one or more operations to control the ultrasound machine based on the one or more touchless inputs, including the specific word or sequence of words from the lip reading, and machine state of the ultrasound machine, wherein determining the one or more operations is further based on captured audio information of the individual and comprises dynamically adjusting, based on an environment in which the ultrasound machine resides, weights associated with results of lip reading recognition and audio recognition to determine the one or more operations to control the ultrasound machine;
- and
- controlling the ultrasound machine using at least one of the one or more operations.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.