WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY AS A DATA CONDUIT IN THREE-DIMENSIONAL ULTRASONOGRAY

• US 20110034209A1
• Filed: 08/13/2010
• Published: 02/10/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 06/18/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Regents of the University of California (University of California)
• Original Assignee: Regents of the University of California (University of California)
• Inventors: Granot, Yair, Rubinsky, Boris, Meir, Arie, Ivorra, Antoni
• Application Number:
  US12/856,323
• Publication Number:
  US 20110034209A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/556.1
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 30/20 for handling medical images, e.g. DICOM, HL7 or PACS
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/67 for remote operation
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 88/02 Terminal devices

Abstract

An imaging system, having: an imaging data acquisition device; a remote image reconstruction and data processing facility; and a wireless data transfer to transmit raw data from the data acquisition device to the remote facility. At the facility, the raw data is processed to prepare a diagnostic image that can be transmitted to an expert or non-expert, or transmitted back to the display of the wireless data transfer device.

Claims

1. A method of providing a patient with medical imaging technology, comprising:

providing an ultrasound transducer and a wireless data transfer device at the patient'"'"'s site;

acquiring raw two-dimensional ultrasound data from the patient using the ultrasound transducer;

transferring the raw two-dimensional ultrasound data from the ultrasound transducer to the wireless data transfer device;

transmitting the raw two-dimensional ultrasound data to a remote processing server with the wireless data transfer device; and

constructing a three-dimensional ultrasound image from the raw two-dimensional ultrasound data.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the wireless data transfer device is a cellular phone.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

transmitting a diagnostic image from the remote processing server to the wireless data transfer device based on the three-dimensional image.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

transmitting a diagnostic image to an expert.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

transmitting a diagnostic image to a non-expert.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the raw two-dimensional ultrasound data is transmitted from the wireless data transfer device to the remote processing server by a wireless data transfer modality such as e-mail, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, SMS, or MMS Telnet.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the raw two-dimensional data is transmitted from the wireless data transfer device to the remote processing server as analog data through a voice channel of a cellular phone.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the ultrasound transducer lacks a physically integrated processing unit.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the diagnostic image is a JPEG, WINDOWS Bitmap, WINDOWS Metafile, TIFF, Targa, RAW, PNG, GIF, or equivalent image format.

10. A method of providing a three-dimensional image, comprising:

acquiring raw imaging data from a patient with a data acquisition device;

transferring the acquired raw data to a wireless data transfer device;

using the wireless data transfer device to transmit the raw imaging data to a remote processing server; and

constructing a three-dimensional image from the raw data at the remote processing server.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the data acquisition device is an ultrasound transducer.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the wireless data transfer device is a cellular phone.

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

transmitting a diagnostic image from the remote processing server to the wireless data transfer device; and

displaying the diagnostic image on a screen of the wireless data transfer device.

14. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

transferring a diagnostic image to an expert.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the expert is at a location different from the patient or the remote processing server.

16. The method of claim 14, wherein the expert transmits a diagnosis to the wireless data transfer device for the patient to receive.

17. The method of claim 14, wherein the expert transmits a diagnosis to a non-expert.

18. The method of claim 10, wherein the raw data is transmitted to the remote processing server by a wireless data transfer modality such as e-mail, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, SMS, or MMS Telnet.

19. The method of claim 10, wherein the raw data is transmitted to the remote processing server as analog data through a voice channel of a cellular phone.

20. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

transmitting data acquisition device positioning data to the remote processing server.

21. A system for providing three-dimensional ultrasound data, comprising:

an ultrasound transducer;

a cellular phone operatively coupled to the ultrasound transducer; and

a remote processing server that is linked to the cellular phone in order to receive raw two-dimensional ultrasound data from the cellular phone and construct a three-dimensional ultrasound image based on the raw two-dimensional ultrasound data.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein the raw two-dimensional ultrasound data is transmitted through the cellular phone by a wireless data transfer modality such as e-mail, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, SMS, or MMS Telnet.

23. The system of claim 21, wherein the raw two-dimensional ultrasound data is transmitted through the cellular phone by analog data through a voice channel of the cellular phone.

24. The system of claim 21, further comprising an expert opinion network linked to the remote processing server to provide a diagnosis based on the three-dimensional ultrasound image.

25. A system for providing a diagnostic image, comprising:

a data acquisition device;

a wireless data transfer device operatively coupled to the data acquisition device; and

a remote processing server that is linked to the data acquisition device in order to receive raw two-dimensional data from the data acquisition device and construct a diagnostic image based on the raw two-dimensional data.

26. The system of claim 25, wherein the data acquisition device is an ultrasound transducer.

27. The system of claim 25, wherein the wireless data transfer device is a cellular phone.