Imaging Completeness Verification via Landmark Matching
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Solution Overview
Problem
Healthcare providers face challenges in determining whether they have captured the entire surface area of a patient's body part during medical examinations, particularly in imaging procedures, as existing systems lack effective methods to verify the completeness of imaging and identify unimaged areas.
Innovation Solution
A system that includes a receiver circuit for acquiring reference images with landmark subsurface features, a feature matching circuit to determine correspondences between atlas and imaged landmarks, and a reporting circuit to generate data on imaged and unimaged areas, allowing healthcare providers to assess the completeness of imaging.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional imaging methods are used without verification systems, then the imaging process is simple and quick, but the completeness of imaging cannot be determined and critical regions may be missed
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates a pre-imaging plan that identifies all target regions and landmarks before the actual imaging procedure. This preliminary mapping allows the system to verify completeness by comparing acquired images against the pre-defined plan, ensuring no critical areas are missed without requiring complex real-time analysis.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback mechanisms where imaging results are continuously compared against the reference atlas and imaging plan. The reporting circuit generates feedback information indicating which regions have been successfully imaged and which require additional imaging, enabling iterative verification until completeness is achieved.
2Reliability
If comprehensive imaging of entire surface area is performed, then completeness is improved, but the time and resources required increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The system divides the body part surface into discrete regions of interest and landmarks that can be independently identified and imaged. By segmenting the imaging task into specific target areas rather than requiring exhaustive coverage of the entire surface, the system achieves comprehensive verification of critical regions while reducing overall imaging time.
Solution Approach 2:
The system focuses imaging efforts on specific regions of interest and landmarks that are clinically relevant, rather than attempting to image the entire surface area uniformly. This partial action approach targets only the necessary areas for diagnostic purposes, eliminating waste of time on non-critical regions while maintaining imaging completeness for important structures.
3Measurement precision
If manual verification of imaging completeness is performed, then system complexity is reduced, but measurement precision and accuracy of completeness determination decrease
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces a reference atlas as an intermediary that contains pre-defined landmarks and regions of interest. This atlas serves as a mediator between the imaging system and the verification process, providing an objective standard against which acquired images can be automatically compared. The atlas enables precise completeness assessment without requiring complex manual verification protocols.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates a digital copy or representation of the expected anatomical structures through the reference atlas. By comparing acquired images against this digital template, the system can automatically and precisely determine completeness without manual intervention. This copying approach replaces subjective manual verification with objective digital comparison, improving measurement precision.
Data Source
AI summary
Described embodiments include a system, method, and computer program product. In a described system, a receiver circuit receives at least two reference images of a patient body part. Each reference image includes a respective landmark subsurface feature of the patient body part, and each imaged landmark subsurface feature has a respective spatial relationship to a respective region of a surface of the patient body part imaged during a medical examination. A feature matching circuit determines a correspondence between (x) each atlas landmark subsurface feature of the patient body part included in a landmark subsurface feature atlas and (y) each respective imaged landmark subsurface feature. A reporting circuit generates informational data reporting a depiction of an area of the surface of the patient body part by at least two adjacent imaged regions of the surface of the patient body part. A communication circuit outputs the informational data.