HYBRID MEDICAL IMAGE PROCESSING

• US 20080181472A1
• Filed: 07/24/2007
• Published: 07/31/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 01/30/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Siemens Healthineers AG (Siemens AG)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Nishiyama, Hiroki, Kim, Moon J., Moulic, James R., Doi, Munehiro, Mori, Yumi, Nakano, Hiroki
• Granted Patent: US 8,238,624 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/128
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 1/00 General purpose image data processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/00 Image analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 30/40 for processing medical images, e.g. editing
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/67 for remote operation

Abstract

The present invention uses a common, hybrid system platform to provide a generalized medical image processing system that can handle the existing medical image application as it is and route the compute intensive medical image processing to a multi0core processor/processing system. The invention allows the processing platform to be shared among healthcare system such as mammography, X-ray, CT Scan MRI, two-photon, laser microscopy, digital pathology, etc. It also allows the processing platform to deliver medical images to a variety of client devices, such as a desktop computer or a handheld device, through the network without high-performance graphical display capabilities because the rendering of the medical images is performed on the Cell BE based platform of the invention.

Claims

1. A hybrid medical image processing system, comprising:

a pre-processor for receiving raw medical image data from a set of modalities and for storing the raw medical image data in temporary storage;

a medical image processor for processing the raw medical image data for viewing by medical professionals; and

a post-processor for storing and retrieving processed medical image data, and for performing analytics on the processed medical image data.

2. The hybrid medical image processing system of claim 1, the set of modalities comprising a set of medical image capture devices.

3. The hybrid medical image processing system of claim 2, the set of medical image capture devices comprising at least one of the following, a CT scanning device, a MRI device, an X-ray device, a PET device, and a SPECT device.

4. The hybrid medical image processing system of claim 1, the medical image processor processing the raw medical image data for registration, segmentation, and fusion.

5. The hybrid medical image processing system of claim 1, the post-processor searching a particular pattern of the processed medical image data.

6. The hybrid medical image processing system of claim 1, the hybrid medical image processing systems being capable of being implemented across a plurality of different computing platforms.

7. The hybrid medical image processing system of claim 1, further comprising a switch for connecting to a network.

8. The hybrid medical image processing system of claim 1, the raw medical image data being received from the set of modalities via a set of medical image grabbers.

9. A hybrid medical image processing system, comprising:

a set of servers for receiving and storing medical image data in a server database, the set of servers comprising a server application, a medical image query application, and a medical image transfer application; and

a set of processing systems for processing the medical image data, the set of processing systems comprising a cell application, a command dispatcher, a processing engine library, and a medical image transfer library.

10. The hybrid medical image processing system of claim 9, further comprising a set of functional units for viewing the medical image data comprising a client application and a medical image processing command library for the set of processing systems.

11. The hybrid medical image processing system of claim 9, the server application being configured to track the medical image data in the server database, and to hold the medical image data in a file server.

12. The hybrid medical image processing system of claim 9, the medical image query application being configured to provide thumbnail and medical image lists of files stored in the server database.

13. The hybrid medical image processing system of claim 9, the medical image transfer application being configured to send the medical image data to a set of functional units based on a command issued by the set of functional units.

14. The hybrid medical image processing system of claim 9, the cell application running on a set of processing engines, and being configured to:

receive functional commands from a set of functional units;

send at least a subset of the commands to the set of servers;

receive the medical image data from the set of servers;

assign tasks to the set of processing engines to process the medical image data based on the commands; and

send results from the set of processing engines to the set functional units.

15. The hybrid medical image processing system of claim 9, the set of servers and the set of processing systems each including a communications library, a communications card, an operating system, and firmware.

16. A hybrid medical image processing method, comprising:

receiving commands from a set of functional units on a set of processing systems;

sending at least a subset of the commands to a set of servers;

receiving medical image data from the set of servers;

assigning tasks for processing the medical image data to a set of processing engines;

processing the medical image data with the set of processing engines; and

sending results of the processing to the set of functional units.

17. The hybrid medical image processing method of claim 16, further comprising generating the commands on the set of functional units using a client application and a medical image processing command library.

18. The hybrid medical image processing method of claim 16, further comprising interpreting the commands on the set of processing systems using a cell application and a command dispatcher

19. The hybrid medical image processing method of claim 16, further comprising rendering the medical image data on the set of functional units.

20. A program product stored on at least one computer readable medium for processing medical images, the at least one computer readable medium comprising program code for causing at least one computer system to:

receive commands from a set of functional units on a set of processing systems;

send at least a subset of the commands to a set of servers;

receive medical image data from the set of servers;

assign tasks for processing the medical image data to a set of processing engines;

process the medical image data with the set of processing engines; and

send results of the processing to the set of functional units.

21. The program product of claim 20, the at least one computer readable medium further comprising program code for causing at least one computer system to generate the commands on the set of functional units using a client application and a medical image processing command library.

22. The program product of claim 20, the at least one computer readable medium further comprising program code for causing at least one computer system to interpret the commands on the set of processing systems using a cell application and a command dispatcher

23. The program product of claim 20, the at least one computer readable medium further comprising program code for causing at least one computer system to render the medical image data on the set of functional units.

24. A method for deploying a hybrid medical image processing system, comprising:

deploying a computer infrastructure being operable to;

receive commands from a set of functional units on a set of processing systems;

send at least a subset of the commands to a set of servers;

receive medical image data from the set of servers;

assign tasks for processing the medical image data to a set of processing engines;

process the medical image data with the set of processing engines; and

send results of the processing to the set of functional units.