Portable ultrasound system
AssigneeTeraTech Corporation
InventorsAlice M. Chiang, Noah Berger
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Exemplary embodiments provide systems and methods for portable medical ultrasound imaging. Preferred embodiments utilize a hand portable, battery powered system having a display and a user interface operative to control imaging and display operations. A keyboard control panel can be used alone or in combination with touchscreen controls to actuate a graphical user interface. Exemplary embodiments also provide an ultrasound engine circuit board including one or more multi-chip modules, and a portable medical ultrasound imaging system including an ultrasound engine circuit board.
Claims36
A portable medical ultrasound imaging device comprising:
- a transducer probe housing a transducer array;
- and
- a portable tablet housing mounted on a cart, the portable tablet housing having a computer in the portable tablet housing, the computer including a central processing unit performing a scan conversion operation and at least one memory, a field programmable gate array (FPGA) to control transmit signals emitted by the transducer array, wherein the portable tablet housing is powered by a battery, and a touchscreen display that displays an ultrasound image, the touchscreen display positioned on the portable tablet housing and including a touch actuated focal zone control and a focal range control;
- wherein the touchscreen display displays a user interface enabling a user selection of a preset group of image control settings associated with an anatomical structure from among a plurality of presets for separate anatomical structures, and wherein each of the separate anatomical structures is associated with an imaging protocol performed by a separate machine learning algorithm;
- a graphics processor in the portable tablet housing that is connected to the central processing unit wherein the graphics processor is configured to perform more than 1000 giga floating point operations per second to execute a machine learning algorithm based on the user selection using ultrasound image data in response to a touch actuated input on the touchscreen display, the machine learning algorithm to generating computed real time ultrasound images, wherein the generated computed real time ultrasound images are displayed on the touchscreen display;
- and
- an ultrasound beamformer processing circuit that receives image data from the transducer array, the ultrasound beamformer processing circuit being communicably connected to the computer.
A method of operating a cart mounted medical ultrasound imaging device, the medical ultrasound imaging device comprising a transducer probe, a portable tablet housing having a computer system including a central processing unit in the portable tablet housing, the computer including at least one processor and at least one memory, a battery, a touchscreen display for displaying an ultrasound image, an ultrasound beamformer processing circuit disposed in the portable tablet housing, and a graphics processing unit in the portable tablet housing communicably coupled to the central processing unit, the graphics processing unit configured to perform more than 1000 giga floating point operations per second, the method comprising the steps of:
- displaying on the touchscreen display a user interface enabling a user selection of a preset group of image control settings associated with an anatomical structure from among a plurality of presets for separate anatomical structures, and wherein each of the separate anatomical structures is associated with an imaging protocol performed by a separate machine learning algorithm;
- receiving, at the computer, an input from the touchscreen display;
- actuating a transmission of ultrasound pulses with a transducer array in the transducer probe wherein a field programmable gate array (FPGA) controls said transmission;
- performing a beamforming operation to generate ultrasound image data;
- and
- performing a machine learning computational process to adjust ultrasound image data with a neural network using the graphics processing unit in response to a further touchscreen actuated input from the touchscreen display to display computed real time ultrasound images.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.