Ultrasonic cardiac assessment of hearts with medial axis curvature and transverse eccentricity
AssigneeKoninklijke Philips N.V.
InventorsScott Holland Settlemier, David Prater, Robert Joseph Schneider
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An ultrasonic imaging system produces more diagnostic cardiac images of the left ventricle by plotting the longitudinal medial axis of the chamber between the apex and mitral valve plane as a curved line evenly spaced between the opposite walls of the myocardium. Transverse image planes are positioned orthogonal to the curved medial axis with control points positioned in the short axis view on lines evenly spaced around and emanating from the medial axis. If the short axis view is of an oval shaped chamber the transverse image is stretched to give the heart a more rounded appearance resulting in better positioning of editing control points.
Claims14
An ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system for cardiac diagnosis, comprising:
- an ultrasound probe;
- and
- a processor configured to:
- acquire, using the probe, three dimensional ultrasound image datasets including a heart;
- produce image data of a myocardium and a heart chamber from the three dimensional ultrasound image datasets;
- delineate a curved medial axis of a long axis view of the heart chamber in the image data between a longitudinally separated apex and valve plane that is more evenly positioned between opposite walls of the myocardium as compared to a straight medial axis between the apex and the valve plane;
- produce a short axis view of a plane intersecting the curved medial axis including editing control points for a border of the myocardium on evenly angularly distributed lines emanating from the delineated curved medial axis in the plane of the short axis view that are more symmetrically distributed around the curved medial axis as compared to their uniform radial distribution about a straight medial axis between the apex and the valve plane;
- and
- control a display to display a heart chamber image in a plane defined by the curved medial axis.
A method of diagnosing a patient by ultrasonic cardiac imaging comprising:
- acquiring a sequence of three dimensional image datasets of a heart;
- extracting a long axis view of a myocardium and heart chamber from the sequence of three dimensional image datasets;
- delineating a curved medial axis of the heart chamber between an apex and valve plane which is more evenly spaced between opposite walls of the myocardium than a straight medial axis between the apex and the valve plane;
- extracting a short axis view of the myocardium and heart chamber from the sequence of three dimensional image datasets;
- and
- displaying editing control points for a border of the myocardium in the short axis view on evenly angularly distributed lines emanating from the delineated curved medial axis in a plane of the short axis view that are more symmetrically distributed around the curved medial axis as compared to their uniform radial distribution about a straight medial axis between the apex and the valve plane.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.