Recent Commercial Developements in Ultrasound Imaging

Dipl.Ing. Gert Hetzel

Siemens AG Medical Solutions, Vertrieb Ultraschall LD US CM Ultrasound Education Center, Hartmannstraße 16, D-91052 Erlangen Tel. +49 9131 84 - 3211, Fax +49 9131 84 - 6557

Mobile: +49 170 9102593, Email:Gert.Hetzel@med.siemens.de

Digital signal processing opened a door to a lot of image improvement possibilities which had never been realistic before.

Most important for ultrasound imaging is detail and contrast resolution because that was the major limitation in ultrasound diagnostics. Increasing the number of processing channels and the clock rates resulted in images with better contrast and detail resolution.

Methodes known from radar are now used in medical ultrasound. So Synthetic Aperture is used for increasing lateral resolution. Frequency and Spatial Compounding is decreasing the speckle pattern and improves detectability of smal processes in surrounding tissue. Puls Compression technologies enhance penetration without loosing detail resolution.

Analizing the harmonic frequency components of the returning echoes from tissue allow to use a different physical parameter to generate the image and result in clear images even in cases of difficult to scan patients.

Adaption of an additional very fast multidimensional image processor allows the calculation of images in realtime and gives the possibility to overcome spacial limitations of the original small ultrasound image to a panoramic overview image. It can compare images in realtime and detect the variation of the position of the transducer without any position sensor. Appliing that processor a lot of new applications are invented and new image processing possibilities are availble in realtime.

An other application of that special processor is calculation of the amplitude histogram of each image (or part of the image) in realtime and optimization of the image due to that in realtime. In addition the information can be optimized to the properties of the human eye in order to get the whole information visible.

3D technologies are widely and very different applied to the diagnostic ultrasound and increase the acceptance of the modality in respect to x-ray or magnetic resonance imaging.

Doppler and signal correlation technologies allow to detect blood flow and the presentation either in addition to the 2D-image ( colour) or on a time course basis for further evaluation.

So new digital signal processing possibilities are the basis of new properties you never could imagine before.