Heart in 4D
Ultrasound technology allows you to monitor the work of the patient's heart in real time
marks, Geektimes
Cardiologist Bijoy Khandheria has been treating the hearts of his patients for more than 30 years, listening to the sounds made by this organ and viewing images obtained through ultrasound. However, the doctor is not satisfied with the current state of things, since ultrasound does not give the whole picture. "We use the signal to output the image layer by layer, almost the same way a butcher uses a knife, and then we put the picture together in our head. This process always implies some assumptions," says the doctor.
Now the situation may change, as Dr. Khandheriya and colleagues from Aurora St. Luke's Medical Center has created a new software platform. This platform, using an ultrasound system, shows doctors the patient's heart in 4D – three dimensions plus time. In other words, doctors see the work of a person's heart in real time.
The developers claim that the platform, created by the efforts of GE Healthcare specialists, builds a picture so accurately that it becomes possible to even see blood swirls around blood clots in the arteries.
The ultrasound system sends high-frequency acoustic waves into the body, and then captures the reflection, using a certain algorithm to build a "picture" visible to a person.
Usually it all depends on the equipment that generates acoustic signals. But the main thing here is the software platform and algorithms that allow you to create high–definition images showing all the necessary features of the structure of the heart muscle of a particular patient.
The software platform itself was named cSound. The image is built on the basis of data analyzed by the system, with the construction of a "pixel-by-pixel" image. The amount of data passing through the software is quite large. In just one second, the software receives as much information as one DVD can hold, analyzing all this in real time. Naturally, an ordinary PC cannot cope with such a load, so you have to use the capabilities of a supercomputer (which one, it is not reported).
cSound was developed with an eye on another ultrasound system from GE, which is used to build an image of a pregnant woman's fetus. There is a slightly different scheme of data analysis and image construction, but the principle of operation is general.
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17.07.2015