Medical apparatus

• US 20120062717A1
• Filed: 09/08/2011
• Published: 03/15/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 05/10/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Olympus Corporation
• Original Assignee: Olympus Medical Systems Corporation (Olympus Corporation)
• Inventors: Kinouchi, Hideaki, Urakawa, Tsutomu, Ohnishi, Junichi
• Granted Patent: US 8,355,043 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/74
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 1/000094 extracting biological structures
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 1/0005 combining images e.g. side-by-side, superimposed or tiled
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 1/00181 for multiple fixed viewing angles A61B1/00193 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 1/00188 with focusing or zooming features
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2017/00283 with a device releasably connected to an inner wall of the abdomen during surgery, e.g. an illumination source
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2090/371 with simultaneous use of two cameras
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/10068 Endoscopic image
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30004 Biomedical image processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/0016 involving temporal comparison
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/73 using feature-based methods

Abstract

A medical apparatus includes: a first image pickup section that is fixed to a body wall and picks up an image of an inside of a body cavity; a recording section that records in advance, in preparation for a case in which a predetermined image change occurs in a first image picked up by the first image pickup section, a predetermined image area in the first image or a coordinate for specifying the predetermined image area; and a display section that displays, when the predetermined image change occurs in the first image, the image area or the coordinate recorded in the recording section to be superimposed on the first image picked up by the first image pickup section.

Claims

1. A medical apparatus comprising:

a first image pickup section that is fixed to a body wall and picks up an image of an inside of a body cavity;

a recording section that records in advance, in preparation for a case in which a predetermined image change occurs in a first image picked up by the first image pickup section, a predetermined image area in the first image or a coordinate for specifying the predetermined image area; and

a display section that displays, when the predetermined image change occurs in the first image, the image area or the coordinate recorded in the recording section to be superimposed on the first image picked up by the first image pickup section.

2. The medical apparatus according to claim 1, wherein

the first image pickup section is an image pickup section that picks up an image of the inside of the body cavity at a wide angle,

the medical apparatus further comprises a second image pickup section that picks up an image of the inside of the body cavity at an angle narrower than the angle of the first image pickup section and an information acquiring section configured to acquire predetermined image pickup position information and image pickup direction information in the second image pickup section, and

the recording section records, in preparation for the case in which the predetermined image change occurs, a picked-up image picked up by the second image pickup section and the image pickup position information and the image pickup direction information in association with the image pickup area or the coordinate.

3. The medical apparatus according to claim 2, further comprising a movement control section that moves the second image pickup section on the basis of the image pickup position information and the image pickup direction information recorded in the recording section.

4. The medical apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the movement control section controls movement of the second image pickup section according to a selection instruction for the image area or the coordinate recorded in the display section.

5. The medical apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the movement control section increases image pickup magnification of the second image pickup section according to a selection instruction for the image area or the coordinate recorded in the display section.

6. The medical apparatus according to claim 3, further comprising a treatment instrument for performing treatment in an image pickup range of the first image pickup section, wherein

the medical apparatus records a picked-up image picked up by the second image pickup section of a place treated by the treatment instrument in the recording section in association with the image pickup area or the coordinate.

7. The medical apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the display section dividedly displays, on one screen, the first image picked up by the first image pickup section and the picked-up image picked up by the second image pickup section.

8. The medical apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the display section displays in reduction, on one screen, one of the first image picked up by the first image pickup section and the picked-up image picked up by the second image pickup section.

9. The medical apparatus according to claim 2, wherein, in recording the image area or the coordinate in the recording section in advance in preparation for the case in which the predetermined image change occurs in the first image, the medical apparatus records the picked-up image by the second image pickup section, the image pickup position information, and the image pickup direction information in association with the image area or the coordinate in a state in which the image area or the coordinate is set in an image pickup position whose image is picked up by the second image pickup section.

10. The medical apparatus according to claim 2, wherein, when instruction operation for displaying the image area or the coordinate to be superimposed on the first image picked up by the first image pickup section is performed, the medical apparatus displays past history information of the image area or the coordinate recorded in the recording section before the instruction operation.

11. The medical apparatus according to claim 2, further comprising a monitoring section that monitors whether, in image information of a present image area corresponding to a past image area recorded in the recording section, the predetermined change from image information of the past image area occurs.

12. The medical apparatus according to claim 6, further comprising a monitoring section that monitors whether, in image information of a present image area corresponding to a past image area recorded in the recording section, the predetermined image change from image information of the past image area occurs.

13. The medical apparatus according to claim 12, wherein the monitoring section includes a monitoring section that monitors whether bleeding equal to or larger than a predetermined value occurs as the predetermined image change.

14. The medical apparatus according to claim 11, wherein, when the monitoring section determines that the predetermined image change occurs, the monitoring section performs control to move the second image pickup section such that the second image pickup section picks up an image of an image area where it is determined that the predetermined image change occurs.

15. The medical apparatus according to claim 13, wherein, when the monitoring section determines that the predetermined image change occurs, the monitoring section performs control to move the second image pickup section such that the second image pickup section picks up an image of an image area where it is determined that the predetermined image change occurs.

16. The medical apparatus according to claim 14, wherein, when the monitoring section determines that bleeding equal to or larger than a predetermined value occurs as the predetermined image change from the image information of the past image area recorded in the recording section at an end of treatment of a treatment instrument for performing the treatment, the monitoring section performs control to move the second image pickup section such that the second image pickup section picks up an image of an image area where it is determined that the bleeding occurs.

17. The medical apparatus according to claim 11, wherein the monitoring section includes a feature value detecting section that detects a first feature value of an image of the past image area and a second feature value of an image of the present image area and a determining section that compares the first feature value and the second feature value and determines occurrence of the predetermined image change.

18. The medical apparatus according to claim 11, wherein the monitoring section includes a feature value detecting section that detects a first feature value of an image of the past image area and a second feature value of an image of the present image area and a determining section that compares the first feature value and the second feature value and determines occurrence of bleeding as the predetermined image change.

19. The medical apparatus according to claim 17, wherein the feature value detecting section includes a color distribution feature value detecting section that detects a color distribution feature value in an image of the past image area and a color distribution feature value in an image of the present image area or a shape/contour feature value detecting section that detects a feature value of a shape or a contour in the image of the past image area and a feature value of a shape or a contour in the image of the present image area.

20. The medical apparatus according to claim 18, wherein the feature value detecting section includes a color distribution feature value detecting section that detects a color distribution feature value in an image of the past image area and a color distribution feature value in an image of the present image area or a shape/contour feature value detecting section that detects a feature value of a shape or a contour in the image of the past image area and a feature value of a shape or a contour in the image of the present image area.