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US 2019/0142264 A1Published application
Vocal Cord Stroboscopy
AssigneeKARL STORZ Imaging, Inc.
InventorsPieter Henderikus Andries Bos, Timothy King
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system, method, scope device, and camera control module device for a stroboscopic laryngoscope, to enable scopes able to operate with a rolling shutter-type image sensor. With selected pulsing of a strobe light, subset image data from adjacent rolling-shutter frames is selected, gain compensated for missing light and combined into a new single video frame.
Claims18
A medical scope system comprising:
- a stroboscopic laryngoscope;
- a microphone;
- a camera control module including an electronic controller communicatively coupled to the stroboscopic laryngoscope and the microphone;
- a display device communicatively coupled to the camera control module;
- and
- wherein the camera control module electronic controller is operable for:
- measuring a patient's vocalization with the microphone and determining a base frequency of the vocalization;
- during the patient's vocalization, causing a light emitter of the stroboscopic laryngoscope to pulse at a timing interval selected based on the base frequency of the vocalization;
- reading image data from an image sensor array of the stroboscopic laryngoscope according to a rolling shutter process including:
- (a) creating two or more light emitter pulses during first and second adjacent image frames, (b) reading the image data from lines of the image sensor array offset in time such that at least two of the two or more light emitter pulses each expose sensor pixels in both first and a second image frames simultaneously, and (c) selecting a first subset of the image data from the first frame and a second subset of the image sensor data from the second frame, the second subset including a different frame portion than the first subset, the first and second subsets including data resulting from the simultaneous exposure of the first and second frames;
- and
- combining the image data from the first and second subsets to create a combined image frame based on the first and second frames.
9 more elements
A method of operating a medical scope system, the method comprising:
- measuring a patient's vocalization with a microphone and determining a base frequency of the vocalization;
- observing the patient's vocal cords with a stroboscopic laryngoscope during the patient's vocalization and pulsing a light emitter of the stroboscopic laryngoscope or an associated camera control unit at time intervals selected based on the base frequency of the vocalization;
- reading image data from an image sensor array of the stroboscopic laryngoscope according to a rolling shutter process including:
- (a) creating two or more light emitter pulses during two consecutive video frames, (b) reading the image data from lines of the image sensor array offset in time such that at least two of the two or more light emitter pulses each expose sensor pixels in both first and second adjacent frames simultaneously, and (c) selecting a first subset of the image sensor data from the first frame and a second subset of the image sensor data from the second frame, the second subset including a different frame portion than the first subset, the first and second subsets including data resulting from the simultaneous exposure of the first and second frames;
- and
- combining the image sensor data from the first and second subsets to create a combined frame based on the first and second frames.
3 more elements
A camera control module for use with a stroboscopic laryngoscope, the camera control module comprising:
- an electronic controller adapted to communicatively couple to a stroboscopic laryngoscope, a display device, and a microphone, the camera control module electronic controller is operable for:
- receiving an audio signal patient's vocalization with the microphone and determining a base frequency of the vocalization;
- commanding a light emitter of the stroboscopic laryngoscope to pulse at time intervals selected based on the base frequency of the vocalization;
- reading image data from an image sensor array of the stroboscopic laryngoscope according to a rolling shutter process including:
- (a) creating two or more light emitter pulses during each video frame, (b) reading the image data from lines of the image sensor array offset in time such that at least two of the two or more light emitter pulses each expose sensor pixels in both first and second adjacent frames simultaneously, and (c) selecting a first subset of the image sensor data from the first frame and a second subset of the image sensor data from the second frame, the second subset including a different frame portion than the first subset, the first and second subsets including data resulting from the simultaneous exposure of the first and second frames;
- and
- combining the image sensor data from the first and second subsets to create a combined frame based on the first and second frames.
4 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.