Cardiac Phase Selection for Contrast Assessment
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current methods for quantifying cardiac contrast enhancement are limited by the need for time-consuming analysis and lack of spatial information, particularly due to cardiac motion which complicates the assessment of contrast agent wash-in rates across the heart cycle.
Innovation Solution
The system automatically selects ultrasound images from specific phases of the heart cycle, allowing for motion correction and reduced data sets that enhance the accuracy of contrast agent assessment by using ECG information and visual characteristics to identify matching images, thereby simplifying the analysis and improving the precision of blood flow measurements.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If quantification is performed over the entire heart cycle, then comprehensive blood flow assessment is achieved, but data complexity and analysis time increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the heart cycle into distinct phases (systole and diastole) and performs quantification on specific phases rather than the entire cycle. This segmentation reduces the volume of data requiring analysis while maintaining comprehensive assessment through selective phase evaluation, directly resolving the contradiction between comprehensive assessment and analysis time.
2Quantity of substance
If images from multiple heart cycles are analyzed, then more data points are available for quantification, but cardiac motion complicates the assessment
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies motion correction techniques before quantification analysis to pre-stabilize the images. By correcting for cardiac motion in advance, the system enables reliable comparison of images across multiple heart cycles, maintaining image consistency while increasing the number of usable data points for quantification.
3Ease of operation
If manual phase selection is performed, then user control over analysis phase is maintained, but the process becomes time-consuming
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements automated phase selection algorithms that identify and select appropriate cardiac phases without requiring manual user intervention. The system automatically detects key cardiac events (such as R-wave peaks) and selects images at predetermined time intervals relative to these events, eliminating the time-consuming manual selection process while preserving user-defined phase parameters.
4Speed
If high frame rate imaging is used, then more temporal resolution is achieved, but the data set size increases and complicates analysis
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the specific frames corresponding to the desired cardiac phase from the high frame rate sequence, rather than analyzing all frames. By selecting and isolating representative frames at predetermined time intervals relative to cardiac events, the system maintains the temporal resolution benefits of high frame rate imaging while reducing the data set to a manageable size for quantification analysis.
Data Source
AI summary
In one embodiment, at least one visual characteristic from a selected image is used to automatically select an ultrasound image from a set of images from a plurality of heart cycles. In another embodiment, motion correction is performed on ultrasound images that are automatically selected from a plurality of ultrasound images associated with the same phase of the heart cycle. In yet another embodiment, ultrasound images are automatically selected from a set of images based on a time interval that is within a tolerance range from a reference phase of the heart cycle. In another embodiment, a stored user-preference of a phase of the heart cycle is used to automatically select an ultrasound image from a set of images. In yet another embodiment, a user-defined region of interest is placed on an ultrasound image associated with a selected phase of a heart cycle.