Scanner Patient Support With Auto-Folding Lateral Wings
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing medical scanners face challenges in optimizing patient throughput and ensuring safety during patient preparation, particularly in positioning upper and lower extremities to prevent pinching and friction, which complicates automation and increases operational costs.
Innovation Solution
A patient support system with lateral wings that extend from a central area, transitioning from an undeployed to a deployed position within the scanner bore, providing a protective enclosure around the patient during movement, utilizing the scanner bore's conical shape and mattress material properties for automatic folding.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If ceiling camera technology is used to supervise and guide patient preparation, then operator safety and positioning accuracy are improved, but system expense increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patient support structure performs self-positioning and self-protection functions through its mechanical design. The lateral wings automatically deploy and position themselves as the patient table moves into the scanner bore, eliminating the need for external monitoring systems like ceiling cameras. The structure serves its own protective function without requiring additional complex monitoring equipment.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention extracts the safety monitoring function from the complex ceiling camera system and integrates it directly into the patient support structure itself. By embedding the protective function within the support structure's mechanical design, the solution removes the need for separate expensive monitoring systems while maintaining safety functionality.
2Reliability
If manual positioning of patient extremities is performed by operator, then patient safety is ensured, but patient throughput is reduced and operational complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The lateral wings are pre-positioned on the patient support structure before the patient enters the scanner. As the patient table moves into the scanner bore, the wings automatically deploy to their protective positions in advance, eliminating the need for manual positioning adjustments during the scanning process and enabling faster patient throughput.
Solution Approach 2:
The patient support structure transitions from a static configuration to a dynamic one where the lateral wings can automatically change position. The wings move from a retracted state to an extended protective state as the patient table enters the scanner, providing adaptive protection without requiring manual intervention and improving operational efficiency.
3Reliability
If lateral wings are made larger to extend beyond scanner bore width, then patient protection coverage is improved, but device complexity and material requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The lateral wings are constructed as flexible, thin-profile structures that can extend beyond the scanner bore width without adding significant structural complexity. The flexible material allows the wings to conform to the patient's body contours while maintaining a simple overall structure that does not require complex support mechanisms.
Solution Approach 2:
The lateral wings extend in the lateral dimension beyond the width of the scanner bore, creating a protective enclosure that encompasses the patient laterally. This dimensional extension provides comprehensive protection coverage while maintaining structural simplicity through the use of thin, flexible wing elements rather than bulky three-dimensional structures.
Data Source
Figure 1
Figure 2(a)~2(d)
Figure 3(a)~3(c)
AI summary
A patient support for a medical imaging scanner is used to support a patient as they move into a scanner bore of the medical imaging scanner. A pair of lateral wings extends laterally from a central support area. The lateral wings each have an undeployed position in which they hang down from the sides of the central support area and a deployed position in which that are curled up to form a lateral barrier at the sides of the central support area. The lateral wings are configured to adopt the deployed position when the patient support moves into the scanner bore. In this way, a protection is provided for the fingers or arms of the patient as they enter (and reside in) the scanner bore.