System and method for fault detection and recovery in a medical imaging system

• US 20060005081A1
• Filed: 06/30/2004
• Published: 01/05/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 06/30/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: General Electric Company
• Original Assignee: General Electric Company
• Inventors: Shah, Jigney N., Parthan, Vinay, Seth, Anuj
• Granted Patent: US 7,684,654 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/39
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/055 involving electronic [EMR] or nuclear [NMR] magnetic resonance, e.g. magnetic resonance imaging
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/00 Apparatus or devices for radiation diagnosis; Apparatus or devices for radiation diagnosis combined with radiation therapy equipment instruments measuring radiation intensity for application in the field of nuclear medicine, e.g. in vivo counting, G01T1/161; apparatus for taking X-ray photographs G03B42/02
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/03 Computed tomography [CT] echo-tomography A61B8/14
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/586 Detection of faults or malfunction of the device
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/00 Diagnosis using ultrasonic, sonic or infrasonic waves imaging of objects using sonar G01S15/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0715 in a system implementing multitasking multitasking per se G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40

Abstract

A system and method for fault detection and recovery in a medical imaging system are provided. The method includes monitoring operations of a plurality of subsystems of the medical imaging system and determining if an error has occurred in a subsystem based on the monitoring. The method further includes identifying at least one component within the subsystem having the determined error and automatically restoring the at least one component in the identified subsystem having the determined error.

Claims

1. A method for controlling a medical imaging system, said method comprising:

monitoring operations of a plurality of subsystems of a medical imaging system;

determining if an error has occurred in a subsystem based on the monitoring;

identifying at least one component within the subsystem having the determined error; and

restoring automatically the at least one component in the identified subsystem having the determined error.

2. A method in accordance with claim 1 further comprising notifying a user of the determined error.

3. A method in accordance with claim 1 further comprising storing information relating to the determined error.

4. A method in accordance with claim 1 wherein restoring automatically the at least one component in the identified subsystem comprises restoring automatically the at least one component based on stored data relating to one of a plurality of stable states.

5. A method in accordance with claim 1 wherein the monitoring comprises requesting a response from components of the subsystems.

6. A method in accordance with claim 5 wherein the requesting is performed at one of (i) a predetermined time interval and (ii) a time period defined by a type of the component.

7. A method in accordance with claim 5 wherein the determining comprises identifying components failing to respond to the request within a predetermined time period as components having an error.

8. A method in accordance with claim 1 wherein the restoring automatically comprises at least one of restarting, resetting, rebooting and reinitializing the at least one component in the identified subsystem having the determined error.

9. A method in accordance with claim 1 further comprising disabling at least one of operations and components relating to the determined error.

10. A method in accordance with claim 1 further comprising classifying the level of the error.

11. A method in accordance with claim 10 wherein the error level comprises one of a degraded mode operation level, a low severity level, a medium severity level and a high severity level.

12. A method in accordance with claim 11 wherein the restoring automatically comprises resetting automatically, while the identified subsystem in which the at least one component having the determined error is located is operating, only the at least one component in the identified subsystem having the determined error if the error is a degraded mode operation level error.

13. A method in accordance with claim 11 wherein the restoring automatically comprises resetting automatically only the at least one component in the identified subsystem having the determined error if the determined error is a low severity level error.

14. A method in accordance with claim 11 wherein the restoring automatically comprises resetting the at least one component in the identified subsystem having the determined error and any related components if the determined error is a medium severity level error.

15. A method in accordance with claim 11 wherein the restoring automatically comprises performing automatically a system level restart if the determined error is a high severity level error.

16. A method in accordance with claim 15 further comprising notifying a user of the high severity level error and wherein the user controls the system level restart.

17. A method in accordance with claim 1 further comprising storing recovery data for at least one of a plurality of stable states for restoring a component in a subsystem having an error.

18. A method in accordance with claim 1 further comprising registering components within each of the subsystems to identify the subsystem in which a component having an error is located.

19. A method in accordance with claim 1 further comprising configuring the restoring based on a severity level of the determined error.

20. A method in accordance with claim 1 wherein the components comprise at least one of software and hardware components.

21. A method in accordance with claim 1 further comprising associating an actor with each of the components.

22. A method for controlling a medical imaging system, said method comprising:

identifying a plurality of components of subsystems of a medical imaging system;

requesting at predetermined time intervals a response from each of the plurality of components;

determining if one or more components fails to respond within a predetermined time period indicating an error associated with the one or more components failing to respond;

determining a severity level of the error; and

performing a reset to a stable state of the one or more components failing to respond based on the severity level of the error.

23. A method in accordance with claim 22 wherein performing a reset comprises performing one of a component reset, application level reset and system level reset based on the severity level.

24. A method in accordance with claim 22 wherein performing a reset comprises accessing stored information relating to one of a plurality stable states for resetting the one or more components failing to respond.

25. A method in accordance with claim 22 further comprising halting operations associated with the component failing to respond.

26. A medical imaging system comprising:

a plurality of subsystems each having at least one component;

a subsystem controller for each of the plurality subsystems communicating with the at least one component in each of the subsystems, the subsystem controller configured to identify components within the subsystem failing to respond to a request for a response and to reset the component failing to respond; and

a system manager communicating with each of the plurality of subsystem controllers and configured to communicate a failure to respond to each of the subsystem controllers.

27. A medical imaging system in accordance with claim 26 wherein the components comprises software and hardware components and further comprising an actor associated with each of the components.

28. A medical imaging system in accordance with claim 26 wherein the subsystem controller is configured to determine a severity level of an error corresponding to the component failing to respond.

29. A medical imaging system in accordance with claim 28 wherein the subsystem controller is configured to perform reset operations based on the determined severity level.

30. A medical imaging system in accordance with claim 29 wherein the reset operations comprise one of a component reset, application level reset and system level reset.

31. A medical imaging system in accordance with claim 26 wherein the subsystems comprise at least one of a physical and logical subsystem.

32. A medical imaging system in accordance with claim 26 further comprising a location registration component for identifying the subsystem in which a component is located.

33. A medical imaging system in accordance with claim 26 wherein the subsystem controller further comprises a subsystem manager.

34. A medical imaging system in accordance with claim 26 wherein the subsystem controller is configured to reset at least one component based upon a component controlled by another subsystem controller failing to respond.

35. A medical imaging system in accordance with claim 26 further comprising at least one user interface and wherein the system manager is configured to communicate the failure to respond as an error to the at least one user interface.