Atl Ultrasound, Inc.

Koninklijke Philips Corporation N.v.

Thomas Martin Wissler

Lars Jonas Olsson

Roy B Peterson

An extended field of view image is formed by combining a plurality of spatially offset ultrasonic images which have been spatially aligned. Images which are to be aligned are processed to produce two sets of corresponding images of progressively lower resolution. The spatial alignment is performed by comparing images of the same resolution level from each set, and progressing from comparison of the lowest resolution images to comparison of the highest. Only prominent feature areas of the images are used in the comparison to improve alignment reliability and to reduce computational needs. As each pair of images is compared, the result of the comparison is used to pre-align the images of the next resolution level. Results are checked and refined against boundary conditions and by gradient refinement.

Extended field of view ultrasonic diagnostic imaging

An extended field of view ultrasonic imaging system allows the direction of scanhead motion to be reversed to reacquire the desired image plane or patient anatomy when the movement of the scanhead departs from the desired path of travel.

Extended field of view ultrasonic diagnostic imaging with image reacquisition

An extended field of view image memory has x-y coordinates corresponding to the sight area of an extended field of view image, and a depth corresponding to the maximum number of elemental image pixels that can be compounded to form a pixel of the extended field of view image. Each elemental image is entered into the memory in registration with a previously acquired elemental image, and pushes down any previously entered images it overlaps. The finite depth of the memory thus forms a FIFO register at each pixel location, which eliminates the oldest pixel data when a newly entered image causes the maximum pixel depth at a location to be exceeded.

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Kenmore, WA, United States of America

Thomas Martin Wissler