System and method for displaying portions of in-vivo images

• US 9,060,673 B2
• Filed: 04/28/2011
• Issued: 06/23/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 04/28/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Given Imaging Limited (Medtronic Plc)
• Original Assignee: Given Imaging Limited (Medtronic Plc)
• Inventors: Krupnik, Hagai, Horn, Eli, Ecker, Ady
• Primary Examiner(s): Patel, Nirav G
• Application Number:
  US13/643,483
• Publication Number:
  US 20130109915A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,517 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 1/000094 extracting biological structures
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 1/00045 Display arrangement
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 1/0005 combining images e.g. side-by-side, superimposed or tiled
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 1/041 Capsule endoscopes for imaging
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 1/045 Control thereof
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/5838 using colour
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04842 Selection of displayed objects or displayed text elements G06F3/0482 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04845 for image manipulation, e.g. dragging, rotation, expansion or change of colour
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/60 Editing figures and text; Combining figures or text
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 3/4038 Image mosaicing, e.g. composing plane images from plane sub-images
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/0012 Biomedical image inspection
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/945 User interactive design; Environments; Toolboxes

Abstract

A method and a system for displaying portions of in vivo images such as pathological or anatomical landmark portions of images, may include receiving a stream of in vivo images captured in a body lumen, and selecting relevant image portions such as suspected pathological image portions from the stream, based on one or more predetermined criteria. A spatial arrangement of the image portions may be determined, and the selected image portions may be resized to an appropriate size, and displayed in a rectangular or hexagonal array layout according to the determined spatial arrangement, such that rows and columns of selected image portions are adjacent to each other.

Claims

1. A method for displaying portions of in vivo images, the method comprising:

receiving a stream of in vivo images captured in a body lumen;

automatically selecting image portions which correspond to suspected pathology from the stream, wherein the selection is based on one or more predetermined selection criteria, the criteria comprising detection of a suspected pathology, and wherein selected image portions include the detected suspected pathology;

selecting an array for display of the selected image portions;

selecting a spatial arrangement for display of the selected image portions;

automatically resizing the selected image portions to appropriate dimensions; and

displaying the selected image portions arranged spatially in the selected array.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising determining the number of image portions to be displayed in the array.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising determining the appropriate dimensions of the selected image portions in the array.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising displaying a time bar with a cursor indicating the capture time of the selected image portions displayed in a current layout.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

determining similarity between sequential image portions; and

arranging similar sequential image portions in a chronological sequence in the array.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the selected image portions are displayed in the array adjacent to each other, with no spaces, background or borders between the adjacent image portions.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

receiving a user indication of a selected image portion in the array; and

displaying the complete image frame corresponding to the selected image portion.

8. The method of claim 1, comprising cropping selected images to obtain selected image portions.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the spatial arrangement is selected from:

arranging image portions in chronological order in the array, arranging image portions depicting intestinal lumen areas in the center of the array and image portions that contain tissue walls around the periphery of the array, and arranging image portions depicting intestinal lumen areas in the top rows of the array and image portions that contain tissue walls in the bottom rows of the array.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the array comprises an array of hexagons.

11. A system for displaying portions of in vivo images comprising:

a processing unit to receive a stream of in vivo images captured in a body lumen by an imaging capsule, the processing unit comprising;

an editing filter to automatically select from the stream image portions corresponding to suspected pathology, wherein the selection is based on one or more predetermined selection criteria, the criteria comprising detection of a suspected pathology, and wherein selected image portions include the detected suspected pathology, and

a layout unit to determine an array for display, to generate a spatial arrangement of the selected image portions and to automatically resize the selected image portions to appropriate dimensions; and

a display device to display the spatially arranged and resized image portions in the array.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the layout unit is to determine the number of selected image portions to be displayed in the array.

13. The system of claim 11, wherein the layout unit is further to determine similarity between sequential selected image portions, and to arrange similar image portions in a chronological sequence in the array.

14. A method of displaying portions of in vivo images, the method comprising:

receiving a stream of in vivo images captured in a body lumen;

editing the image stream using an editing filter, to obtain a subset of images which correspond to one or more predetermined editing criteria, the criteria comprising detection of a suspected pathology or abnormality;

automatically cropping, from each image in the subset of images, image portions corresponding to the editing criteria, wherein said image portions include the suspected pathology or abnormality;

selecting a spatial arrangement for the image portions in a grid layout;

automatically resizing the cropped image portions to appropriate dimensions based on the selected spatial arrangement; and

displaying the resized image portions spatially-arranged in the grid layout.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the grid layout comprises a grid of hexagonally bordered images.