Dynamic montage reconstruction

• US 9,092,551 B1
• Filed: 08/10/2012
• Issued: 07/28/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 08/11/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Merative US LP
• Original Assignee: DR Systems Incorporated (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Inventors: Reicher, Murray A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Drennan, Barry
• Assistant Examiner(s): Lee, Jonathan S
• Application Number:
  US13/572,397
• Time in Patent Office: 1,082 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 18/21 Design or setup of recognition systems or techniques; Extraction of features in feature space; Blind source separation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/048 Interaction techniques based on graphical user interfaces [GUI]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0484 for the control of specific functions or operations, e.g. selecting or manipulating an object, an image or a displayed text element, setting a parameter value or selecting a range
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/02 Knowledge representation; Symbolic representation
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/003 Reconstruction from projections, e.g. tomography
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 30/20 for handling medical images, e.g. DICOM, HL7 or PACS
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/63 for local operation

Abstract

Provided herein are various systems and methods for storing, accessing, and utilizing information regarding medical image montages.

Claims

1. A method of customizing display of montages, the method comprising:

determining montage characteristics associated with a montage including a plurality of medical images of a medical exam, the montage characteristics including;

an arrangement, including a number of rows and a number of columns, of the plurality of medical images on one or more display devices of a computing system having one or more hardware processors;

display characteristics of the medical images, the display characteristics including one or more of magnification, window/level, brightness, contrast, color presentation, centering, cropping, filters, annotations, or insets; and

one or more characteristics of the one or more display devices;

associating the montage characteristics with the medical exam so that the montage characteristics are available for use by computing systems that later access the medical exam in determining how to display the plurality of images of the medical exam;

in response to input from a user of a first computing system for display of the montage on a first display of the first computing system, based on a comparison of one or more of an aspect ratio or display resolution of the first display and one or more of the determined montage characteristics, adjusting at least one of the number of rows or the number of columns of images of the montage that are concurrently displayed on the first display.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more characteristics of the one or more display devices includes a display resolution of the one or more display devices.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more characteristics of the one or more display device includes an aspect ratio of the one or more display devices.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the arrangement of the plurality of medical images includes indications of specific locations of each medical image in the montage.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the arrangement of the plurality of medical images includes indications of an order that medical images of the montage are displayed.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

in response to a user selection of the montage for display as a result of one or more of;

manual input or automated actions initiated by the user, based on stored display preferences of the user, based on manual input from the user, or based on stored system display preference rules, displaying the medical images of the montage in a dynamically customized manner, so that instead of the medical images appearing identically to the montage;

the medical images of the montage are arranged to better fit an aspect ratio of a display monitor;

the medical images of the montage are individually displayed one at a time instead of as a multi-image montage;

or

the medical images of the montage are displayed in some other manner.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more of the determined montage characteristics that are compared comprise the determined one or more characteristics of the one or more display devices in the montage characteristics.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein a quantity of medical images of the montage or an arrangement of medical images of the montage that are concurrently displayed on the first display is reduced in response to determining that the display resolution of the first display is less than a display resolution stored in the montage characteristics.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein a quantity of medical images of the montage or an arrangement of images of the montage that are concurrently displayed on the first display is adjusted in response to determining that the aspect ratio of the first display is different than an aspect ratio stored in the montage characteristics.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein images of the montage are displayed on respective computing systems based on rules indicating relationships between display characteristics of respective computing systems and one or more of quantities, arrangements, or image characteristics for use in displaying images of the montage.

11. A method of displaying medical images of a montage, the method comprising:

determining a display environment of a computing device on which medical images of a medical exam are to be displayed, the display environment including one or more of a display resolution of one or more display devices and an aspect ratio of the one or more display devices;

accessing montage characteristics associated with the medical exam, the montage characteristics including indications of;

a plurality of images in the montage;

an order of the plurality of images; and

one or more display characteristics of respective images of the plurality of images, the display characteristics including indications of a number of rows and a number of columns of concurrently displayed images of the plurality of images on a previous display device; and

based on the determined display environment, displaying one or more of the plurality of images on the one or more display devices in accordance with the montage characteristics such that at least one of the number of rows or the number of columns of the displayed one or more of the plurality of images is adjusted for the determined display environment.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein, in response to determining that the display environment is not suitable for concurrent display of all of the medical images of the medical exam on the one or more display devices or that user or system rules indicate that not all of the medical images should be concurrently displayed on the one or more display devices, concurrently displaying only a subset of the medical images according to the order indicated in the montage characteristics.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein a user of the computing device is provided with controls that allow movement between the medical images in accordance with the order indicated in the montage characteristics.

14. The method of claim 12, wherein the subset of the medical images includes only a single image.

15. The method of claim 12, wherein the subset of the medical images are displayed on the one or more display devices in accordance with rules configured to determine a layout of the subset of medical images.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the rules indicate associations between quantities of images to be concurrently displayed and one or more of respective display resolutions or aspect ratios.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein the montage characteristics include the rules.

18. The method of claim 15, wherein the rules are associated with one or more of a user of the computing device or a user group of which the user of the computing device is a member.

19. The method of claim 11, wherein the montage characteristics further comprise one or more characteristics of a computing system on which the montage was displayed when the montage characteristics were generated.

20. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

in response to determining that the display environment is suitable to display the montage that was displayed when the montage characteristics were generated, displaying a single montage image file comprising a combined snapshot of all the images of the montage as displayed when the montage characteristics were generated without displaying separate image files of each of the medical images of the montage.

21. The method of claim 20, wherein the display environment is determined to be suitable to display the montage if the one or more display devices are capable of displaying the montage image file at a native display resolution of the montage image file.

22. The method of claim 20, wherein the display environment is determined to be suitable to display the montage if the one or more display devices are a same display resolution or higher than the display resolution of one or more display devices on which the montage was displayed when the montage characteristics were generated.

23. The method of claim 12, wherein the display environment is determined to not be suitable for concurrently displaying all of the plurality of medical images if the one or more display devices are of a display resolution that is smaller than a display resolution of one or more display devices on which the montage was created or the one or more display devices are of an aspect ratio that is different than the one or more display devices on which the montage was created.

24. The method of claim 12, wherein the plurality of medical images includes images from a plurality of image series.

25. The method of claim 24, wherein the montage characteristics are only stored for montages having images from multiple image series.

26. The method of claim 12, wherein at least one of the plurality of images includes a cine loop of images, a DICOM series of images, or a DICOM multi-frame image.