Brainlab Ag

Other

Hagen Kaiser

Kajetan Berlinger

Ivana Ivanovska

Pablo Aponte

Stefan Vilsmeier

Stephan Froehlich

Jochen Veigel

Michael Stead

Stephen Froehlich

Stefan Seifert

A computer-implemented medical method of determining a breathing signal of a patient is disclosed. The method includes determining a motion trajectory of a structure associated with at least one body part of the patient, the motion trajectory being indicative of a respiratory movement of the structure, acquiring surface data representative of a position of a surface region of the patient, computing an intersection of the determined motion trajectory and the acquired surface data, and determining a breathing signal of the patient based on the computed intersection. The breathing signal is indicative of a breathing state of the patient.

Computation of a breathing curve for medical applications

A camera assembly () for use in medical tracking applications, comprising a range camera () and a thermographic camera () in a fixed relative position.

Medical camera assembly comprising range camera and thermographic camera

Provided is a method of positioning a patient for radiation treatment and/or of monitoring a position of the patient during radiation treatment. The method includes providing surface data from a 3D surface scanner indicative of a surface of a body part of the patient to be irradiated in the radiation treatment. Surface data are calibrated with respect to a relative position of the 3D surface scanner and an isocenter position of a radiation treatment apparatus. A beam path of a radiation beam is determined based on planning data for the radiation treatment and intersected with a part of the surface of the patient represented by the surface data. Further, at least a first portion of the patient's surface located inside the beam path and/or at least a second portion of the patient's surface located outside the beam path is calculated.

Beam path based patient positioning and monitoring

A medical image processing method performed by a computer, for measuring the spatial location of a point on the surface of a patient's body including: acquiring at least two two-dimensional image datasets, wherein each two-dimensional image dataset represents a two-dimensional image of at least a part of the surface which comprises the point, and wherein the two-dimensional images are taken from different and known viewing directions; determining the pixels in the two-dimensional image datasets which show the point on the surface of the body; and calculating the spatial location of the point from the locations of the determined pixels in the two-dimensional image datasets and the viewing directions of the two-dimensional images; wherein the two-dimensional images are thermographic images.

Human body measurement using thermographic images

The present invention relates to a computer-implemented medical method for monitoring a spatial position of a patient's body part, wherein at least one optimum spatial direction for a line of sight of a check x-ray-image is determined, that qualifies for quantifying a deviation of the spatial position of the patient's body part from a target spatial position for the patient's body part. The present invention further relates to a corresponding computer program and a corresponding medical system.

Triggering of x-ray-images based on surface measurements

A positional pattern of an irradiation unit for irradiating a patient with treatment radiation is determined based on optimal order data describing an order of the irradiation unit positions for which the statistical value is optimal. The optimal order data is determined based on irradiation unit position data describing irradiation unit positions of the irradiation unit for which the imaging device has a free viewing direction onto the position of the patient, position orders data describing all possible orders of the irradiation unit positions for which the imaging device has a free viewing direction onto the position of the patient, and intersection angle data describing a statistical quantity of the intersection angles between free viewing directions of the imaging unit for irradiation unit positions which are immediately subsequent in the order described by the position orders data.

Sorting the sequential arrangement of radiation treatment beams regarding well-distributed unobstructed lines of sight

A camera assembly for use in medical tracking applications having a range camera and a thermographic camera in a fixed relative position. The range camera is configured to acquire a first image of an object at a first instant of time and a second image at a second instant of time. The thermographic camera is configured to acquire a first thermal image of the object at the first instant and a second thermal image at the second instant. A processor identifies at least one point pair in the first thermal image and the second thermal image. The at least one point pair is mapped to corresponding point pairs associated with the first image and the second image. Movement of the object is determined based on the mapping.

First and second skeleton model data is determined based on first and second surface data of a patient. Each of the skeleton model data describes geometries of rigid anatomic structures of a patient at a different point in time. Skeleton difference data is determined describing differences between the geometries of the rigid anatomic structures. In a next step, movement instruction data is determined which describes movement to be performed by the rigid anatomic structures to minimize the differences, i.e. to correct the posture of the patient. The movement instruction data is for example determined based on anatomy constraint data which describes anatomical movement constraints for the rigid anatomic structures (e.g. range of motion of a joint). An instruction is displayed (e.g. using augmented reality), guiding the user how to move the rigid anatomic structures so as to correct the patients posture.

Patient positioning using a skeleton model

A method for determining the relative position between a first camera and a second camera used in a medical application, wherein the first camera captures a 2D image of a phantom, the second camera emits light onto the phantom and analyzes the reflected light, thus generating a 3D point cloud representing points on the surface of the phantom, and the phantom has a planar surface forming a background on which a plurality of 2D markers are formed, wherein one of the background and the 2D markers is reflective, thus reflecting light emitted by the second camera back to the second camera, and the other one is non-reflective, thus not reflecting light emitted by the second camera back to the second camera, the method involving that a) the first camera captures a 2D image of the phantom, b) the second camera generates a 3D point cloud representing the planar surface of the phantom, c) the 2D markers are identified in the 2D image, thus obtaining 2D marker data representing the locations of the 2D markers in the 2D image, d) the 2D markers are identified in the 3D point cloud using the property that points on a non-reflective part of the planar surface are identified as having a larger distance to the second camera than points on a reflective part of the planar surface, thus obtaining 3D marker data representing the locations of the 2D markers in a reference system of the second camera, and e) finding the relative position between the first camera and the second camera by applying a Perspective-n-Points algorithm on the 2D marker data and the 3D marker data.

Determining the relative position between a point cloud generating camera and another camera

Disclosed is a computer-implemented method for determining the pose of an anatomical body part of a patient's body for planning radiation treatment, a corresponding computer program, a non-transitory program storage medium storing such a program and a computer for executing the program, as well as a system for determining the pose of an anatomical body part of a patient's body for planning radiation treatment, the system comprising an electronic data storage device and acquire surface tracking data the aforementioned computer.

Surface-guided x-ray registration

Disclosed is a computer-implemented method for partitioning a medical image which encompasses acquiring a medical image of a surface of a patient and a surface of at least one object (embodied by image data), for example, by means of a 3D scanning device. Furthermore, a thermal image of the surface of the patient and the surface of the object is acquired (embodied by thermal data), for example, by means of a thermal camera. The medical image and the thermal image are fused (based on registration data), such that the image data is associated with the thermal data (embodied by association data). By analyzing the association data with regard to a specified condition (embodied by condition data), for example a condition related to a temperature threshold, a subset of the association data which fulfills the condition and describes a part of the medical image is determined (embodied by condition compliance data). For example, the object is colder than the skin of the patient, so by applying the temperature threshold, the part of the image representing the object may be identified. Accordingly, a part of the medical image showing a surface of the patient may be distinguished from a part of the medical image showing a surface of the object. Furthermore, and for example, one of those two parts may be defined to be a region of interest, and a positional shift of the region of interest (e.g. a face of the patient) may be determined by tracking the region of interest.

Partitioning a medical image

First and second skeleton model data is determined based on first and second surface data of a patient. Each of the skeleton model data describes geometries of rigid anatomic structures of a patient at a different point in time. Skeleton difference data is determined describing differences between the geometries of the rigid anatomic structures. In a next step, movement instruction data is determined which describes movement to be performed by the rigid anatomic structures to minimize the differences, i.e. to correct the posture of the patient. The movement instruction data is for example determined based on anatomy constraint data which describes anatomical movement constraints for the rigid anatomic structures (e.g. range of motion of a joint). An instruction is displayed (e.g. using augmented reality), guiding the user how to move the rigid anatomic structures so as to correct the patient's posture.

A method and system supports pre-positioning a patient for treatment by radiotherapy or radiosurgery. The disclosed method encompasses comparing an image of a reference structure having a known position relative to an anatomical body part of a patient, such as a live thermal/infrared image of the reference structure, to a predetermined medical image of the reference structure associated with a known position relative to a reference position, such as a known isocenter of a radiotherapy or radiosurgery apparatus. On that basis, it is determined whether the reference structure has moved relative to the reference position. A decision may be made to determine whether the reference structure and therefore the patient has been correctly positioned and/or kept in his desired position relative to a treatment device, and to compensate for any possible positional deviation by moving the patient.

Growing community of inventors

Icking, Germany

Hagen Kaiser