Method and apparatus for wireless portable ultrasound imaging

An apparatus for imaging an oral structure of upper and lower jaws at facial and lingual surfaces of a patient, the apparatus comprising:

• a) an ultrasound probe comprising an array of piezoelectric transducer crystals operating at an ultrasonic frequency of at least 20 megahertz, the ultrasound probe further comprising a handle;
• b) a probe head configured for housing the array of piezoelectric transducer crystals, the probe head disposed on a tilt mechanism attached to the handle, the tilt mechanism comprising a first rotating joint configured for rotation about a first axis operatively coupled to the probe head, the tilt mechanism further comprising a second rotating joint configured for rotation about a second axis disposed between the first rotating joint and the handle, wherein the first axis is not parallel to the second axis, thereby configuring the probe head for rotation about the first axis and tilt about the second axis relative to the handle;
• c) a gel pad comprising one or both of polymer and hydrogel configured to be disposed on the probe head and positioned between the array of piezoelectric transducers crystals and the oral structure;
• d) an ultrasound data acquisition unit, wherein the ultrasound data acquisition unit comprises:
• i) a microcontroller or digital signal processor or an application specific integrated circuit (“ASIC”) operatively coupled to the array of piezoelectric transducer crystals and configured to control ultrasound signal generation, ultrasound signal acquisition, processing of acquired ultrasound signals and communication of the acquired ultrasound signals, and
• ii) a wireless communications transceiver module operatively coupled to the microcontroller or digital signal processor, the wireless communications transceiver module configured to wirelessly transmit the acquired ultrasound signals to a peripheral smart device comprising a visual display, wherein the peripheral smart device comprises a memory further comprising software code segments configured to cause the peripheral smart device to carry out one or more steps comprising of:
• 1. enhancing the acquired ultrasound signals representing images of alveolar bone structure and boundaries of enamel, dentin and gingiva of a patient using a noise removal filter, a contrast enhancement, an edge enhancement, and machine learning, wherein the noise removal filter comprises an adaptive median filter operating on a rectangular window area Sxy centered on X and Y coordinates of a pixel of the images wherein a value of the pixel is replaced for each window-filtering time;
• 2. identifying peaks and troughs of one or more of cementoenamel junctions, alveolar bone crests and gingival sulcus of the patient using object detection and recognition;
• 3. calculating changes in bone level or pocket depth of the patient using measurements between the acquired ultrasound images of different periods;
• 4. comparing the acquired ultrasound images of the patient with one or more of cone beam computerized tomography (CBCT) images of an oral structure of the patient and enhancing visualization of soft and hard tissues of the oral structure;
• 5. eliminating artifacts caused by multiple reflections of ultrasonic waves in the acquired ultrasonic images of the oral structure;
• 6. calculating ultrasonic velocity for the hard tissues;
• and
• 7. Correcting the detected thickness of the hard tissues;
• e) a battery for providing electrical power to the ultrasound data acquisition unit;
• and
• f) a control switch configured for controlling the operation of the apparatus.