The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 27, 2000
Filed:
Nov. 17, 1998
Paul T Dunham, Everett, WA (US);
ATL Ultrasound, Inc., Bothell, WA (US);
Abstract
A scanning aid is provided for aiding the user in obtaining 3D image data of a patient for rendering in a quantified 3D ultrasonic image. The scanning aid of the present invention relates the location of each piece of image data in three dimensional space to the physiology of the patient by relating the scanhead and its image planes to the patient. The scanning aid of the present invention provides the user with the ability to manually control the movement of the scanhead; the ability to obtain uniformly angularly spaced image planes regardless of the speed or variance in the motion of the scanhead; and the ability to obtain a repeatably fixed relationship between the scanhead and the scanning aid to assure the spatial precision of the acquired image data and to aid the user in repeatedly obtaining the same three dimensional ultrasonic images.