Hitachi Medical Corporation

Hitachi, Ltd.

Fujifilm Corporation

Fujifilm Healthcare Corporation

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Hitachi Aloka Medical, Ltd.

Hideki Yoshikawa

Takashi Azuma

Kenichi Kawabata

Hiroki Tanaka

Kunio Hashiba

Shinichiro Umemura

Kazuaki Sasaki

Rei Asami

Marie Tabaru

Kazuhiro Yamanaka

Shin-ichiro Umemura

Tatsuya Hayashi

Yushi Tsubota

Takahide Terada

Hiroshi Masuzawa

Shigeo Sumino

Wenjing Wu

Ken-ichi Kawabata

Hirozumi Takeshima

Noriaki Inoue

A push wave transmission unit transmits a push wave to a biological tissue of a subject. A tracking wave transmission/reception unit transmits a tracking wave to the biological tissue and receives a reflected ultrasound wave reflected by the biological tissue. An elasticity analysis unit measures a propagation velocity of a shear wave generated in the biological tissue by the push wave and measures an elastic property of the biological tissue based on the propagation velocity, and measures the propagation velocity of the shear wave based on a measurement signal obtained by the reflected ultrasound wave received by the tracking wave transmission/reception unit. A controller determines whether to re-measure the elastic property according to an unnecessary component included in the measurement signal. When determining to re-measure the elastic property, the ultrasound diagnostic apparatus re-measures the elastic property by changing an acoustic property of the push wave according to the unnecessary component.

Ultrasound diagnostic apparatus

Provided is an acoustic coupler capable of achieving both low elastic modulus and high deformability required for ultrasound imaging. The acoustic coupler is disposed between a probe for transmitting ultrasound waves and a subject, the acoustic coupler comprising a hydrogel including a copolymer that contains water. The copolymer comprises a monofunctional monomer having one ethylenically unsaturated group and a polyfunctional monomer having two to six ethylenically unsaturated groups. The molar ratio of the monofunctional monomer to the polyfunctional monomer is more than 90 and less than or equal to 3500.

Acoustic coupler and ultrasound imaging method

The invention provides an ultrasound imaging apparatus capable of highly accurately extracting a blood flow in a fine blood vessel in a short time. N pieces of frame data is generated by receiving ultrasound waves reflected by a subject with a plurality of transducers. A correlation matrix is generated based on a vector in which data at a corresponding position of the frame data is arranged for N frames, and a singular value and a singular vector for each of N ranks are calculated. A first filter element is calculated based on a variance between data at a corresponding position zx among a plurality of blood flow component frame data obtained by multiplying a plurality of the frame data by singular vectors at a threshold rank k or more. The second filter element is calculated based on the tissue component frame data obtained by multiplying the frame data by a singular vector at a rank 1. The frame data is weighted by the first filter element and/or the second filter element to generate a clutter reducing image.

Ultrasound imaging apparatus, signal processing method, and signal processing program

To provide a power converter which can detect occurrence of excess current in early stage without providing a blanking time when the detection of excess current is not performed after the turn on of the switching device, and which can protect the power converter. A power converter includes a time change detection circuit that outputs a detection signal according to a time change rate of a main voltage; an excess current determination circuit that generates an excess current occurrence signal of normal current state when the detection signal is less than a first threshold value, and generates the excess current occurrence signal of excess current state when the detection signal is not less than the first threshold value; and a driving circuit that generates the driving voltage of OFF state when the drive command signal is ON state and the excess current occurrence signal is excess current state.

Power converter

The present invention aims to obtain and provide one or more types of information desired by an operator with a high efficiency. From a probe that transmits an ultrasonic wave to a subject and receives the ultrasonic wave coming from the subject due to the transmission, a reception signal is received and the reception signal is processed. Accordingly, a movement vector indicating a movement amount and a movement direction is calculated and a movement vector distribution is determined for a plurality of points set at least two-dimensionally in the subject. A distribution of one or more desired movement vector components is extracted from the movement vector distribution.

Ultrasonic imaging device and ultrasonic signal processing device

Provided is a technique for evaluating properties of a membranous tissue or a surface of the tissue in a biological body by ultrasonic waves. A method of the invention includes setting one or more measurement points on a surface of the biological tissue to be inspected; measuring, in a state in which an elastic wave propagates to the biological tissue, at least a surface wave of the elastic wave by measuring a displacement of the biological tissue at the measurement point by using an ultrasonic wave; and calculating an index value indicating physical properties of the biological tissue by using the measured displacement.

Ultrasonic diagnostic device and method for evaluating physical properties of biological tissue

An ultrasonic imaging device according to the present invention includes: a container provided with an opening for inserting a target region of a subject; and a transmission/reception unit that transmits ultrasound to the target region inserted into the container filled with a liquid and receives the ultrasound that penetrates the target region or is reflected from the target region. The container has a pressure reducing unit that holds the target region in the container by reducing a pressure in the container of which the opening is covered with the target region. According to the present invention, since it is possible to maintain a shape close to a predetermined shape when the target region of a breast or the like is inserted into a container filled with the liquid, it is possible to measure the target region with high accuracy by transmitting and receiving ultrasound.

Ultrasonic imaging device, and ultrasonic transmission/reception method

Apparatus and methods are provided herein for providing treatment plan in which a position of a heat source and a treatment order are optimized. An example treatment support apparatus includes a processor and a storage device connected to the processor. The storage device hold image information of tissue in a living body of a treatment target. The processor may extract a blood vessel structure of the inside of the living body from the image information, calculate positions of one or more heat sources for thermal treatment on a treatment scheduled region including at least a part of the extracted blood vessel structure on the basis of the extracted blood vessel structure, and output data for displaying an image including the calculated positions of the one or more heat sources.

Treatment support apparatus and treatment support method

There is provided an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus capable of measuring hardness information of a subject with high time resolution and spatial resolution. The apparatus is provided with a ultrasonic probeand a displacement generation unitconfigured to displace an inside of a subject and is configured to transmit an ultrasonic beam for displacement detection to a plurality of detection positions of the subject from the ultrasonic probe, and to detect a shear wave velocity based on the displacement at the plurality of detection positions in a control unitby using a reflection signal detected in a detection unit, thereby outputting hardness information of the subject. The ultrasonic beam for displacement detection is transmitted to one of the plurality of detection positions. A waveform analysis unitof the control unitis configured to perform a change control of analyzing a shear wave resulting from the displacement to thus transmit the ultrasonic beam for displacement detection to another position of the plurality of detection positions. Thereby, it is possible to measure the shear wave velocity with high time resolution and spatial resolution, so that it is possible to obtain the hardness information of the subject with high precision.

Ultrasonic diagnosis device and transmission/reception method

When multiple tissues having differing speeds of sound are intermixed in the viewing field of a measured subject such as a living body, the invention measures hardness, such as modulus of elasticity or viscosity, with high precision.

Ultrasound diagnosis apparatus

Disclosed is an ultrasound diagnosis device for creating an ultrasound image with a high contrast-to-tissue ratio. Said device sends a transmission pulse to the subject, uses an ultrasound probe to receive echoes reflected from an ultrasound contrast agent injected into the subject, and forms an image. The transmission pulse is sent such that nonlinear interactions between the constituent frequency components of said transmission pulse, as a result of the acoustic nonlinearity of the subject, do not produce sum and difference components in the frequency sensitivity range of the ultrasonic probe as the transmission pulse propagates across the subject.

Ultrasound diagnosis device

Provided is an image diagnostic device with which the start and end of the in-flow of a contrast medium are automatically assessed. An image diagnostic device assesses the start and end times of the in-flow of a contrast medium into organs in a lifeform which is a subject.

Image diagnostic device and an image diagnostic method for automatic assessment of the start and end of the inflow of a contrast medium

Provided is an image diagnostic device with which it is possible to correct location misalignment of an image capture subject, and to improve the reliability of the result of the correction, in time series image data. An image diagnostic device may include an input part () which receives image data input; a correction unit () which computes a correction vector which denotes location misalignment of an image capture subject, and selects image data used with an image correction unit; an image correction part () which carries out a correction process on the image data based on the correction vector and creates corrected image data; a control part () which controls the correction unit and the image correction part; a memory () which stores the corrected image data and measurement data as stored data; an output unit () which outputs the stored data externally; a display unit () which displays the stored data; and an external input device () where an operator makes an input operation.

Image diagnostic device and image correction method

An ultrasonic diagnostic device and image display method display an inflow time map representing relative differences in blood flow dynamics such as inflow of a contrast agent, including extracting a vessel and constructing a noise-less inflow time map, and, in the comparison of differences in color between the constructed inflow time map and the past inflow time map, unifying the color of regions as a base. A TIC analysis unit calculates a parameter (t) indicating an inflow starting time of a contrast agent and a difference of brightness &#x394;I due to the contrast agent using image data in a range designated by an image detection unit. A first pixel selection unit extracts a pixel and removes a non-contrast-enhanced region. An image construction unit constructs an inflow time map colored according to t, and a second pixel selection unit extracts a vessel using a histogram based on &#x394;I.

Ultrasonic diagnostic device and ultrasonic image display method

An ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus and a method having a highly-reliable elastic evaluation unit for tissues. The invention includes a signal processing unit that processes received data obtained after ultrasonic waves are transmitted and received to/from an inspection target through a probe. An ROI detection unit of the processing unit obtains a distance index indicating a region proper for an elastic evaluation based on brightness distribution of the received data obtained by transmitting and receiving first ultrasonic waves to/from the probe, and sets an ROI based on the distance index. Then, second ultrasonic waves are transmitted to the ROI to generate shear waves. An elastic evaluation unit calculates a shear wave velocity based on received data obtained by transmitting and receiving third ultrasonic waves in the ROI, and outputs the shear wave velocity and an elastic evaluation value of the ROI as a reliability index.

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Hideki Yoshikawa