Tablet Ultrasound System
Patent No. US12102480 (titled "Tablet Ultrasound System") was filed by Teratech Corp on Dec 27, 2023.
What is this patent about?
’480 is related to the field of portable medical ultrasound imaging systems . Traditional ultrasound equipment is often bulky and difficult to keep sterile due to keyboards and knobs. There is a growing need for more portable and user-friendly ultrasound devices, especially in field locations where space and hygiene are critical.
The underlying idea behind ’480 is to create a portable, tablet-based ultrasound system controlled entirely through a multi-touch touchscreen interface. This eliminates the need for physical keyboards and knobs, making the device more compact, easier to clean, and more intuitive to use. The system leverages touch gestures for controlling various imaging parameters and functions.
The claims of ’480 focus on a cart-mounted ultrasound imaging system featuring a touchscreen tablet display. The tablet's processor responds to touch gestures to perform selected ultrasound imaging procedures (cardiac, vascular, lesion). A chargeable battery module powers the tablet, and an FPGA manages the ultrasound scan sequence. A multiport transducer connector allows connecting multiple probes, each with a transducer array and beamformer IC. The GUI displays ultrasound images from selected probes, and imaging depth is adjusted via touch gestures.
In practice, the user interacts with the system through the touchscreen, using gestures like flicks and drags to adjust parameters such as penetration depth or beam steering. The system can differentiate between different types of gestures based on velocity and direction, allowing for nuanced control. The tablet form factor and touchscreen interface make the system highly portable and easy to disinfect, addressing the limitations of conventional ultrasound machines.
The invention differentiates itself from prior approaches by integrating all control functions into a touchscreen interface , eliminating the need for traditional keyboards or knobs. This allows for a more compact and user-friendly design, particularly beneficial in portable applications. The use of multi-chip modules further reduces the size of the ultrasound engine, enabling a high channel count within a small footprint.
How does this patent fit in bigger picture?
Technical landscape at the time
In the early 2010s when ’480 was filed, medical ultrasound imaging equipment typically included an ultrasound probe, a keyboard or knob, a computer, and a display. At a time when user input was typically implemented using physical buttons and knobs, hardware or software constraints made it non-trivial to provide a fully functional, portable ultrasound device with a cleanable, intuitive touchscreen interface.
Novelty and Inventive Step
The examiner allowed the claims because no prior art, alone or in combination, teaches a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) configured to manage an ultrasound scan sequence of a selected ultrasound imaging procedure, a multiport transducer connector mounted on the cart to connect one or more transducer probes to the tablet display device, each transducer probe having at least one transducer array that performs at least one imaging operation using an ultrasound beamformer processing integrated circuit that communicates with the at least one transducer array, the at least one imaging operation conducted using instructions received from the FPGA, wherein the graphical user interface is touch actuated to include the image display area that displays at least one ultrasound image using one or more touch selected transducer probes; a complex programmable logic device (CPLD) that clocks an ultrasound scan by at least one of the one or more transducer probes; and wherein one or more imaging operations include selecting an imaging depth in response to a further gesture input detected on the touch screen display and generating at least one image of a region of interest at the selected depth based on a result of the one or more imaging operations, the at least one generated image displayable on the image display area of the touch screen display.
Claims
This patent contains 20 claims, with claim 1 being independent. Independent claim 1 is directed to a portable, touchscreen-actuated, cart-mounted ultrasound imaging system. The dependent claims generally elaborate on and add specific features to the system described in the independent claim, such as display configurations, transducer array types, and user interface elements.
Key Claim Terms New
Definitions of key terms used in the patent claims.
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Date
Description
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US12102480
- Application Number
- US18397557
- Filing Date
- Dec 27, 2023
- Status
- Granted
- Expiry Date
- Mar 15, 2033
- External Links
- Slate, USPTO, Google Patents