BREAST ULTRASOUND SCANNING DEVICE

摘要

An apparatus and a method are disclosed for obtaining ultrasound images of a patient's breast that is chestwardly compressed with a template that is essentially planar and rotates relative to the breast while one or more ultrasound transducers moving with the template take 2D images of the breast through one or more respective radially oriented slots in the template, preferably through a membrane that is porous to a gel. The 2D images are processed into slice images representing breast slices of desired thicknesses and orientation that are displayed alone or with some of the 2D images, preferably pairs of orthogonally disposed 2D images.

主权项

1. An apparatus for ultrasonically scanning a breast, comprising:
an essentially planar radial scanning template configured to contact and compress the breast chestwardly, wherein the template has a rounded periphery and a nipple hole configured for a breast nipple to protrude therethrough, and the template has one or more elongated, slot-shaped openings extending from the central hole toward a periphery of the template; one or more elongated ultrasound transducers each aligned with a respective one of the one or more slot-shaped openings; said template being configured to rotate over the breast while compressing the breast, and said one or more transducers being configured to rotate with the template to scan the breast ultrasonically through the respective one or more slot-shaped openings and to generate 2D ultrasound images of the breast; and a computer-implemented image processing and display facility associated with the one or more transducers and configured to receive and process the 2D images into images of slices of the breast that have selected thicknesses and orientations, and further configured to display, under operator control, at least one or more images selected from the slice images.