System for displaying a 2-D ultrasound image within a 3-D viewing environment
AssigneeSonometrics Corporation
InventorIvan Vesely
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A system for displaying a 2-D ultrasound image in a 3-D viewing environment. Within the same 3-D viewing environment, various surgical instruments can be tracked and displayed, thus correlating 3-D virtual surgery with ultrasound imaging for verification. A detachable housing (220) containing position transducers (222) is attached to a conventional 2-D ultrasound imaging head (200) to provide position data of an imaging plane generated by an image transducer (204).
Claims13
A method for generating a 2-dimensional ultrasound image in a 3-dimensional viewing environment, the method comprising:
- mounting a plurality of mobile transducer means to an ultrasound image transducer means adapted for generating a 2-dimensional echo image plane;
- mounting a first reference transducer means to a first fixed location;
- mounting a second reference transducer means to a second fixed location;
- generating three-dimensional coordinates of the mobile transducer means relative to a reference frame established by the first and second reference transducer means;
- registering the 2-dimensional echo image plane with the three-dimensional coordinates;
- and,
- displaying the 2-dimensional echo image plane at the three-dimensional coordinates, in relation to the reference frame established by the first and second reference transducer means.
A system for generating a 2-dimensional ultrasound image in a 3-dimensional viewing environment comprising:
- image transducer means for generating a 2-D echo image plane;
- mobile transducer means mounted to the image transducer means;
- first reference transducer means located at a first fixed location;
- second reference transducer means located at a second fixed location, wherein the first and second reference transducer means establish a reference frame;
- coordinate generation means for generating 3-dimensional coordinates of the mobile transducer means relative to the reference frame;
- registration means for registering the 2-dimensional echo image plane with the 3-dimensional coordinates;
- and
- display means for displaying the 2-dimensional echo image plane at the 3-dimensional coordinates, in relation to the reference frame.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.