System and method to manage maintenance of a radiological imaging system

• US 7,885,384 B2
• Filed: 01/26/2009
• Issued: 02/08/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 01/26/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: General Electric Company
• Original Assignee: General Electric Company
• Inventors: Zheng, Yibin, Mannar, Kamal
• Primary Examiner(s): THOMAS, COURTNEY D
• Application Number:
  US12/359,408
• Publication Number:
  US 20100189227A1
• Time in Patent Office: 743 Days
• Field of Search: 378/207, 378/101, 378/117, 378/118
• US Class Current: 378/118
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/03 Computed tomography [CT] echo-tomography A61B8/14
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/4429 related to the mounting of source units and detector units
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/4488 Means for cooling A61B6/045 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/586 Detection of faults or malfunction of the device
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 19/4184 characterised by fault tolerance, reliability of production system
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/32371 Predict failure time by analysing history fault logs of same machines in databases
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/45169 Medical, rontgen, x ray
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/40 for the management of medical equipment or devices, e.g. scheduling maintenance or upgrades
• CPC Class Codes: H01J 2235/00 X-ray tubes
• CPC Class Codes: H05G 1/54 Protecting or lifetime predictionoverload protection combined with control H05G1/46
• CPC Class Codes: Y02P 90/80 Management or planning

Abstract

A system and method to predict a failure of an imaging system that includes a radiation source having an x-ray tube assembly is provided. The system includes a storage medium having a plurality of programmable storage instructions to instruct a processor to perform the steps of acquiring an age of the x-ray tube assembly, calculating a baseline probability of a survivability of the tube assembly for a remaining time period dependent on the age of the tube assembly, acquiring measurement of at least one operating parameter of the x-ray tube assembly, and automatically changing the baseline probability of a survivability of the imaging system for the remaining time period in response to the measurement of the at least one operating parameter of the x-ray tube assembly.

Claims

1. A method (300) to predict a failure of an imaging system (105) that includes an x-ray tube assembly (115) as a radiation source (110), the method (300) comprising:

acquiring an age of the x-ray tube assembly (115);

calculating a baseline probability of a survivability of the tube assembly (115) for a remaining time period independent of a usage of the tube assembly (115);

acquiring measurement of at least one operating parameter of the x-ray tube assembly (115);

applying a filter to the acquired measurement, the filter configured to remove outlying measurement data representing a deviation from a trend model and modify the measured at least one operating parameter to remove the outlying measurement data;

acquiring usage data of the imaging system including a type and quantity of images acquired over time;

predicting a usage of the x-ray tube assembly based on the acquired usage data; and

automatically changing the probability of a survivability of the x-ray tube assembly (115) in response to the modified measurement of the at least one operating parameter of the x-ray tube assembly (115) and the predicted usage.

2. The method (300) of claim 1, wherein the at least one operating parameter includes a measure of a severity of an occurrence of an event code generated by the imaging system (105), the event code associated with an abnormal operating condition of the radiation source (110).

3. The method (300) of claim 1, wherein measurement of the at least one operating parameter includes measurement of a frequency of an occurrence of an event code generated by the imaging system (105), the event code associated with an abnormal operating condition of the radiation source (110).

4. The method (300) of claim 1, further comprising the step of extracting the event code from acquired data received from the imaging system (105), the event code representative of at least one of:

an error message, a measurement outside of a threshold range, and a message indicative of a state of the system (105).

5. The method (300) of claim 1, the baseline probability of the survivability of the system (105) is dependent on acquired data of a survivability for a population of other x-ray tube assemblies with age and usage of the imaging system (105).

6. The method of claim 1 wherein applying the filter further comprises:

calculating a rate of usage of the x-ray tube assembly;

comparing the calculated rate of usage of the x-ray tube assembly to a usage trend model;

calculating a departure of the calculated rate of usage from the usage trend mode; and

modifying the measured at least one operating parameter to remove data falling outside of a pre-determined deviation from the calculated departure.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the removed data comprises large-scale single outliers.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein changing the probability of survival further comprises comparing a predicted time to failure to a service event parameter and generating a trigger at a time corresponding to a predetermined service interval in advance of the predicted time to failure.

9. A system (100) to predict a failure of an imaging system (105) that includes a radiation source (110) having an x-ray tube assembly (115), the system (100) comprising:

a storage medium (155) having a plurality of programmable storage instructions; and

a processor (150) in communication with the imaging system (105), the plurality of program instructions to instruct the processor (150) to perform the steps of;

acquiring an age of the x-ray tube assembly (115);

calculating a baseline probability of a survivability of the tube assembly (115) for a remaining time period dependent on the age of the tube assembly (115);

acquiring measurement of at least one operating parameter of the x-ray tube assembly (115);

applying a filter to the acquired measurement, the filter configured to remove outlying measurement data representing a deviation from a trend model and modify the measured at least one operating parameter to remove the outlying measurement data;

acquiring usage data of the imaging system including a type and quantity of images acquired over time;

predicting a usage of the x-ray tube assembly based on the acquired usage data; and

automatically changing the baseline probability of a survivability of the imaging system (105) for the remaining time period in response to the modified measurement of the at least one operating parameter and predicted usage of the x-ray tube assembly (115).

10. The system (100) of claim 9, wherein the at least one operating parameter includes a measure of a severity of an occurrence of an event code generated by the imaging system (105), the event code associated with an abnormal operating condition of the radiation source (110), or a measure of usage of the x-ray tube assembly (115).

11. The system (100) of claim 9, wherein measurement of the at least one operating parameter includes measurement of a frequency of an occurrence of an event code generated by the imaging system (105), the event code associated with an abnormal operating condition of the radiation source (110).

12. The system (100) of claim 9, further comprising the step of extracting the event code from acquired data received from the imaging system (105), the event code representative of at least one of:

an error message, a measurement outside of a threshold range, and a message indicative of a state of the system (105).

13. The system (100) of claim 9, the baseline probability of the survivability of the system (105) is dependent on acquired data of a survivability for a population of other x- ray tube assemblies with age and usage of the imaging system (105).

14. The system (100) of claim 9, wherein the at least one operating parameter generally equals a measure of usage of imaging system (105) weighted relative to a measure of an occurrence of event codes associated with operation of the imaging system (105).

15. The system (100) of claim 9, wherein the at least one operating parameter generally equals a measure of usage of the imaging system (105) weighted relative to a measure of usage of the tube assembly (115) of the system (105) independently thereof.

16. The system (100) of claim 9, wherein the step of automatically changing the baseline probability of time to failure of the imaging system (105) includes decreasing the probability survivability of the imaging system (105) in response to acquiring a measurement of an occurrence of an event code outside a threshold range.

17. The system (100) of claim 9, wherein the step of automatically changing the baseline probability of time to failure of the imaging system (105) includes decreasing the probability survivability in proportion to a predicted value of usage of one or more of the imaging system (105), the radiation source (110), and the tube assembly (115).

18. The system (100) of claim 9, wherein the baseline probability of a survivability of the imaging system (105) for the remaining time period includes a predicted number of hours or days to failure.