A hand-held ultrasound system includes integrated electronics within an ergonomic housing. The electronics includes control circuitry, beamforming and circuitry transducer drive circuitry. The electronics communicate with a host computer using an industry standard high speed serial bus. The ultrasonic imaging system is operable on a standard, commercially available, user computing device without specific hardware modifications, and is adapted to interface with an external application without modification to the ultrasonic imaging system to allow a user to gather ultrasonic data on a standard user computing device such as a PC, and employ the data so gathered via an independent external application without requiring a custom system, expensive hardware modifications, or system rebuilds. An integrated interface program allows such ultrasonic data to be invoked by a variety of such external applications having access to the integrated interface program via a standard, predetermined platform such as visual basic or c++.

A method is provided for measuring or estimating stress distributions on heart valve leaflets by obtaining three-dimensional images of the heart valve leaflets, segmenting the heart valve leaflets in the three-dimensional images by capturing locally varying thicknesses of the heart valve leaflets in three-dimensional image data to generate an image-derived patient-specific model of the heart valve leaflets, and applying the image-derived patient-specific model of the heart valve leaflets to a finite element analysis (FEA) algorithm to estimate stresses on the heart valve leaflets. The images of the heart valve leaflets may be obtained using real-time 3D transesophageal echocardiography (rt-3DTEE). Volumetric images of the mitral valve at mid-systole may be analyzed by user-initialized segmentation and 3D deformable modeling with continuous medial representation to obtain, a compact representation of shape. The regional leaflet stress distributions may be predicted in normal and diseased (regurgitant) mitral valves using the techniques of the invention.

An ultrasonic diagnosis system according to an embodiment of the present disclosure includes a plurality of ultrasonic output patches configured to be attachable to different body parts, a data receiving unit configured to receive data transmitted from the plurality of ultrasonic output patches, a processing unit configured to acquire an imaging result related to the body part by processing the data, and an output unit configured to output the imaging result related to the body part, in which the ultrasonic output patch includes a multichannel ultrasonic transducer array configured to output imaging ultrasonic waves toward the body part and receive the reflected ultrasonic waves, a signal processing module configured to process a signal transmitted to or received from the multichannel ultrasonic transducer array, and a communication module configured to transmit a signal processing result, which is acquired by the signal processing module, to the data receiving unit.

An ultrasonic imaging system produces more diagnostic cardiac images of the left ventricle by plotting the longitudinal medial axis of the chamber between the apex and mitral valve plane as a curved line evenly spaced between the opposite walls of the myocardium. Transverse image planes are positioned orthogonal to the curved medial axis with control points positioned in the short axis view on lines evenly spaced around and emanating from the medial axis. If the short axis view is of an oval shaped chamber the transverse image is stretched to give the heart a more rounded appearance resulting in better positioning of editing control points.

The invention is a device, system, and method for providing an initial assessment of potential heart valve disease and recommending and/or providing follow-up assessments for heart valve disease. The invention includes a simple ECHO device which uses ultrasonic signals to detect and determine maximum blood flow velocities, and compares the maximum blood flow velocities to set thresholds to determine if it is appropriate for the patient to be subjected to additional and more detailed assessments for heart valve disease.

Aspects of the technology described herein relate to wirelessly offloading, from a wearable ultrasound device, ultrasound data sufficient for forming one or more ultrasound images therefrom. The wearable ultrasound device may include an ultrasound patch. Indications that may be monitored with such a device, and therapeutic uses that may be provided by such a device, are also described. Methods and apparatuses are also described for compounding multilines of ultrasound data on an ultrasound device configured to collect the ultrasound data. Additionally, certain aspects of the technology relate to non-uniform grouping of ultrasound transducers that share a transmit/receive circuit in an ultrasound device.

The disclosure herein relates to systems, methods, and devices for medical image analysis, diagnosis, risk stratification, decision making and/or disease tracking. In some embodiments, the systems, devices, and methods described herein are configured to analyze non-invasive medical images of a subject to automatically and/or dynamically identify one or more features, such as plaque and vessels, and/or derive one or more quantified plaque parameters, such as radiodensity, radiodensity composition, volume, radiodensity heterogeneity, geometry, location, and/or the like. In some embodiments, the systems, devices, and methods described herein are further configured to generate one or more assessments of plaque-based diseases from raw medical images using one or more of the identified features and/or quantified parameters.

In one embodiment a system includes a ultrasound probe to capture 2D ultrasonic images of a body part of a living subject, a process to generate a 3D anatomical map of the body part, the 3D anatomical map and the 2D ultrasonic images being registered with a 3D coordinate space, add a 3D indication of an anatomical structure to the 3D anatomical map, render to a display the 3D anatomical map including the 3D indication of the anatomical structure, and render to the display a given one of the 2D ultrasonic images with a 2D indication of the anatomical structure on the given 2D ultrasonic image responsively to the 3D indication of the anatomical structure.

An imaging steering apparatus includes sensors and an imaging processor configured for: acquiring, via multiple ones of the sensors and from a current position (322), and current orientation (324), an image of an object of interest; based on a model, segmenting the acquired image; and determining, based on a result of the segmenting, a target position (318), and target orientation (320), with the target position and/or target orientation differing correspondingly from the current position and/or current orientation. An electronic steering parameter effective toward improving the current field of view may be computed, and a user may be provided instructional feedback (144) in navigating an imaging probe toward the improving. A robot can be configured for, automatically and without need for user intervention, imparting force (142) to the probe to move it responsive to the determination.

The present disclosure describes ultrasound imaging systems and methods, which may enable the automatic identification of an image plane in a pre-operative volume corresponding to a real-time image of a moving region of interest. An example method includes receiving real-time ultrasound image data from a probe associated with a position-tracking sensor, generating real-time images based on the real-time ultrasound data and deriving a motion model from the real-time ultrasound image data. The method may further include automatically identifying an image plane in a pre-operative data set to correspond to the real-time ultrasound image by correcting for motion-induced misalignment between the real-time data and the pre-operative data.