Automated medical imaging system maintenance diagnostics

• US 20040093184A1
• Filed: 11/12/2002
• Published: 05/13/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 11/12/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Koninklijke Philips N.V.)
• Original Assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Koninklijke Philips N.V.)
• Inventors: Hendrickson, David
• Granted Patent: US 6,865,512 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 702/184
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/40 for the management of medical equipment or devices, e.g. scheduling maintenance or upgrades

Abstract

A medical imaging system diagnostics package includes the ability to analyze operator usage data to detect aspects of the manner in which the system is used which may be a source of operating problems. Detecting problems arising from the manner in which the system is used can reduce the number of “no trouble found” repair calls and can often be permanently resolved by additional operator training in the use of the system. The diagnostic package includes the ability to assess the effects of software aging by analyzing the status of components of the medical system which are used by software such as registers, memory and disk drives. The results of this analysis can be used to improve software performance which is degraded but not failing completely such as system slowdowns and lengthened response times.

Claims

1. A medical diagnostic imaging system, including hardware components operated by software to conduct a diagnostic imaging procedure, and an imaging system maintenance system comprising:

a maintenance program, responsive to operator initiation and coupled to hardware components of the imaging system, which receives inputs from components interacting with software for the detection of conditions of software aging; and

a display responsive to the maintenance program which presents the results obtained by the maintenance program.

2. The medical diagnostic imaging system of claim 1, wherein the conditions of software aging include one or more of the number of temporary files;

the number of backup files;

the number of saved lost files;

the number of browser history files;

the amount of hard drive free storage;

hard drive fragmentation;

the number of committed bytes;

the number of pages read per second;

the total number of bytes received per second;

or the disk access time.

3. The medical diagnostic imaging system of claim 1, wherein the display is responsive to the maintenance program to recommend a course of action to resolve a software aging problem.

4. The medical diagnostic imaging system of claim 3, wherein the display is responsive to the maintenance program to recommend adding system resources.

5. The medical diagnostic imaging system of claim 3, wherein the display is responsive to the maintenance program to recommend rebooting the system to address a software aging condition.

6. The medical diagnostic imaging system of claim 3, wherein the implementation of the recommended course of action improves the system response time.

7. The medical diagnostic imaging system of claim 3, wherein the display is further responsive to the maintenance program to present an operator selection which, when selected, at least partially remedies a software aging condition.

8. A medical diagnostic imaging system, including hardware components operated by software to conduct a diagnostic imaging procedure, and an imaging system maintenance or repair system comprising:

a maintenance/repair program, responsive to operator initiation and coupled to a source of information concerning imaging system usage, which acts to develop an analysis of usage of the imaging system over a period of time; and

a display which presents the results obtained by the maintenance program in a manner which facilitates the identification of usage characteristics which may be a source of imaging system problems.

9. The medical diagnostic imaging system of claim 8, wherein the source of information comprises a system log.

10. The medical diagnostic imaging system of claim 9, wherein the system log comprises an error log.

11. The medical diagnostic imaging system of claim 8, wherein the usage characteristics indicate inefficient operation of the medical diagnostic imaging system.

12. The medical diagnostic imaging system of claim 8, wherein the display presents the results obtained by the maintenance program in the form of a scattergram.

13. The medical diagnostic imaging system of claim 8, wherein the display presents the results obtained by the maintenance program in the form of a bar chart.

14. A method of improving the utilization of a medical imaging system comprising:

acquiring usage data of a first medical imaging system;

comparing the usage data with the usage data of a second medical imaging system; and

recommending a change in the utilization of the first medical imaging system.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising:

transmitting the usage data of the first medical imaging system to a repository of imaging system usage data including the usage data of the second medical imaging system.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein transmitting further comprises transmitting the usage data of the first medical imaging system to a central repository of imaging system usage data including the usage data of the second medical imaging system and the usage data of a third medical imaging system;

and

wherein comparing further comprises comparing the usage data of the first medical imaging system with the usage data of the second and third medical imaging systems.

17. A method of improving the repair of a medical imaging system comprising:

determining a strategy for solving a problem with a medical imaging system;

communicating the strategy to repository of repair information; and

communicating the strategy to at least one other medical imaging system.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein determining further comprises determining a strategy for solving a problem with a medical imaging system by a logical analysis program which considers previously defined strategies for solving a problem;

and

wherein the second-named communicating further comprises communicating the strategy to at least one other medical imaging system which solves problems by a logical analysis program which considers previously defined strategies for solving a problem.