Puncture assistance system

A puncture assistance system that assists blood vessel puncture by using ultrasonic images of a cross section of a blood vessel under a patient's skin from an ultrasonic diagnostic device that causes an ultrasonic probe to come into contact with the skin to acquire the ultrasonic images, the system comprising:

• vascular diameter detecting means for detecting a vascular diameter during acquisition of the ultrasonic images;
• puncture assistance information generating means for generating puncture assistance information for determination of whether or not puncture is allowed to be performed based on a collapse state of the blood vessel caused by pressing action of the ultrasonic probe against the skin by comparing a current vascular diameter detected by the vascular diameter detecting means with a standard vascular diameter that is a diameter of a standard blood vessel in a state in which the blood vessel is not pressed by the ultrasonic probe;
• and
• presenting means for presenting the puncture assistance information,
• wherein the puncture assistance information generating means includes:
• an input unit to which a variety of pieces of information including information on the patient and a type of a blood vessel to be punctured are inputted;
• a storage unit that stores a variety of data;
• and an information generating unit that generates, as the puncture assistance information, a vascular compression rate representing a ratio of the current vascular diameter to the standard vascular diameter based on the data stored in the storage unit and the vascular diameter detected by the vascular diameter detecting means,
• the storage unit stores the standard vascular diameter formed of a plurality of vascular diameters set on an age basis or on an adult/child basis, for each type of blood vessel to be punctured, and/or for each magnitude of blood pressure,
• the information generating unit includes a vascular compression rate calculating unit that calculates the vascular compression rate based on the current vascular diameter detected by the vascular diameter detecting means, and
• the vascular compression rate calculating unit, when the variety of information is inputted from the input unit to the vascular compression rate calculating unit, extracts the standard vascular diameter that agrees with the information from the storage unit and uses the extracted standard vascular diameter to determine the vascular compression rate.