Blood flow visualizing diagnostic apparatus

• US 20060025688A1
• Filed: 10/02/2003
• Published: 02/02/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 10/07/2002
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Tohoku Techno Arch Co., Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Tohoku Techno Arch Co., Ltd.
• Inventors: Yambe, Tomoyuki, Hayase, Toshiyuki, Shirai, Atsushi, Funamoto, Kenichi, Saijo, Yoshifumi
• Application Number:
  US10/527,140
• Publication Number:
  US 20060025688A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 600/454
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/06 Measuring blood flow measuring volume flow in general G01F, e.g. G01F1/66, G01F1/72; measuring speed of fluids in general G01P5/00
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/0858 involving measuring tissue layers, e.g. skin, interfaces
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/13 Tomography A61B8/10, A61B8/12 take precedence; tomography for radiation diagnosis A61B6/02
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/463 characterised by displaying multiple images or images and diagnostic data on one display composite display in devices for short-range imaging with acoustic waves G01S7/52074
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 15/8977 using special techniques for image reconstruction, e.g. FFT, geometrical transformations, spatial deconvolution, time deconvolution
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/52071 Multicolour displays; using colour coding; Optimising colour or information content in displays, e.g. parametric imaging
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/52074 Composite displays, e.g. split-screen displays; Combination of multiple images or of images and alphanumeric tabular information

Abstract

A blood flow visualizing diagnostic apparatus characterized by having an ultrasonic measurement unit 120 which emits an ultrasonic beam toward a blood vessel inside a human body to receive the reflected ultrasonic signal, an analysis processing unit 220 which obtains a blood vessel shape and a blood flow velocity in the blood vessel by the received signal, a simulation unit 244 which sets computational lattices on the basis of the blood vessel shape obtained by the analysis processing unit 220 to simulate the blood flow velocity and a pressure distribution, a feedback unit 246 which computes an error between the blood flow velocity obtained by the analysis processing unit and the blood flow velocity obtained by the simulation unit 244 to feed back the error to the simulation unit 244, and display units 260 and 140 which display the blood flow velocity and the pressure distribution output from the simulation unit after the feedback.

Claims

1. A blood flow visualizing diagnostic apparatus characterized by having:

an ultrasonic measurement unit which emits an ultrasonic signal toward a blood vessel inside a human body to receive the reflected ultrasonic signal;

an analysis processing unit which obtains a blood vessel shape and a blood flow velocity in the blood vessel by the received signal;

a simulation unit which sets computational lattices on the basis of the blood vessel shape obtained by said analysis processing unit to simulate the blood flow velocity and a pressure distribution;

a feedback unit which computes an error between the blood flow velocity obtained by said analysis processing unit and the blood flow velocity obtained by said simulation unit to feed back the error to said simulation unit; and

a display unit which displays the blood flow velocity and the pressure distribution output from said simulation unit after the feedback.

2. A blood flow visualizing diagnostic apparatus according to claim 1, characterized in that said feedback unit performs the feedback to a sufficiently large number of representative points which are distributed over the blood flow domain in said computational lattices.