|
|
4D-Ultrasounds.com
is a directory of 3D
Ultrasound and 4D Ultrasound providers. Our directory
features 3D
4D Fetal Ultrasound centers
in the US and Canada. Our
goal is to be the premier baby ultrasound services locator.
News and Articles
New Medical Ultrasound Technology
Rides Wave of the Future
A fully digital 4D ultrasound system is set to
provide a ‘next generation’ integrated solution for
medical
imaging applications, allowing practitioners to provide faster
treatment and improve therapeutic success rates.
(PRWEB) May 14, 2005 -- Developed by ADUMS, an IST-funded project that
ended in April 2005, the advanced high-quality imaging system will
significantly reduce diagnostic time. In addition, the technology uses
off-the-shelf computer hardware, making it a much cheaper alternative
to expensive, purpose-produced ultrasound machines.
“The whole process of ultrasound devices has been moved away
from
the traditional hardware and is now implemented in software,”
says Dr Georgios Sakas, ADUMS project coordinator. “The
hardware
of the device creates mechanical waves and receives the echoes. Once
the echoes are received, they are converted in digital form and the
rest of the processing is performed by software.”
A 4D ultrasound takes multiple images in rapid succession, creating a
three-dimensional motion video, which is invaluable for diagnosis
purposes.
An important factor in ultrasound image processing is the beamformer,
the part of the system that provides the focusing for the ultrasound
beam.
Dr Stergios Stergiopoulos, president of the Canadian National Medical
Technologies, one of the project partners, maintains that even
today’s most advanced state-of- the-art medical ultrasound
imaging systems suffer from very poor image resolution.
“This is the result of the very small size of deployed arrays
of
sensors and the distortion effects by the influence of the human
body’s non-linear propagation characteristics,” he
says.
“The ADUMS project technology replaces the beamformer of the
ultrasound systems with the adaptive beamforming scheme that has been
developed for the sonar array systems of the Canadian Navy. The ADUMS
project results demonstrated that the new adaptive beamformer
significantly improves, at very low cost, the image resolution
capabilities of the ultrasound imaging systems, which will result in
better diagnosis.”
Until now, every new generation of the hardware component of ultrasound
devices was, effectively, a complete redesign.
“On the other hand, ADUMS technology is based on a complete
software approach, using off-the-shelf PC components,”
explains
Dr Sakas. “Thus, a redesign from scratch will not be
necessary
and future improvements can be made by extensions of existing
software.”
The portability and the low cost of the 4D ultrasound systems allow
medical practitioners and family physicians to have ready access to
diagnostic imaging systems on a daily basis and will make a valuable
contribution in the field of preventive medicine, adds Dr Stergiopoulos.
Consortium partners are currently using the new technology for their
businesses and are promoting it to other organisations that use
ultrasound technology.
Contact:
Dr Georgios Sakas
Head of Cognitive Computing & Medical Imaging department
Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics (IGD)
Fraunhoferstr. 5
D-64283 Darmstadt
Germany
Tel: +49-6151-155153
Fax: +49-6151-155-445
Contact: Tara Morris, +32-2-2861985,
###
Issuers of news
releases and
articles, and not 4d-ultrasounds.com or
SandyMeier.com
LLC, are solely responsible for the accuracy of the
content.
News releases and articles are presented unedited as
offered
from the source listed.
|