Abstract:
An ultrasound system has a control panel formed of a top glass plate with control area graphics screened onto the bottom surface of the glass plate. Capacitive foils are attached to the areas of the screened graphics, enabling a user control to be capacitively selected by touching the top surface above the screened graphics. Each control area is selectively back-illuminated by a diffuser frame with light pipes fastened below the glass plate. LEDs fo illumination are mounted on a printed circuit board fastened to the diffuser frame, which are controlled by the printed circuit board. Different groups of user controls are illuminated in accordance with the context of the operating mode or imaging procedure being performed so that only needed control are illuminated while unneeded controls are invisible to the user. All of the controls can be extinguished and de-activated so that the top surface of the control panel can be cleaned without randomly activating the controls of the control panel.
Abstract:
An ultrasonic imaging system is used to observe and guide insertion of a needle into the body to access a targeted surgical site. A two dimensional array probe scans a volumetric region including the surgical site and a multiplanar reformatter formats the resulting 3D echo dataset to form a sequence of spatially adjacent images in real time. A plurality of the spatially adjacent images are concurrently displayed in real time. As the clinician inserts the needle into the body its progress of insertion may be observed in one plane. But if the insertion path of the needle is not constrained to one plane but passes through numerous planes, the insertion path is seen in successive ones of the concurrently displayed adjacent images.
Abstract:
The insertion of a needle or other surgical instrument into the body is guided by three dimensional ultrasonic imaging. A probe having a two dimensional array transducer is placed against the body and manipulated to acquire an image of the site of the surgical procedure inside the body. The clinician inserts the surgical instrument, trying to follow an insertion path which is in the plane of a single image produced by the ultrasound system. The clinician observes the path of insertion and insertion progress on a display of a plurality of real-time 2D ultrasound images of spatially adjacent planes of a volume including the surgical procedure site. If the insertion path of the instrument does not remain in the plane of a single image, portions of the instrument will appear in the images of multiple adjacent image planes when the instrument intersects a succession of image planes as it progresses toward the site of the surgical procedure.