ECHO-SCINTIGRAPHIC PROBE FOR MEDICAL APPLICATIONS AND RELEVANT DIAGNOSTIC METHOD

摘要

An echo-scintigraphic probe for medical applications and the method of merging images. It is constituted by the union of an ultrasound probe suitably integrated, both in geometric terms, and in terms of image processing, with a scintigraphic probe or gamma camera (3). With a single application of said probe, one is able to provide a double image of the object under examination. The ultrasound probe is housed in the head, above the plane of the collimator and kept projecting to favor the direct contact with the body part of the patient to be examined. The collimator is able to obtain images of the biodistribution of a radiolabelled drug by radiation with frontal incidence, maintaining the characteristics of the ultrasound probe. The probe is applicable to both clinical diagnosis and intraoperative diagnosis of cancer with the use of radio tracers. A guided diagnostic method is disclosed that realizes a functional integration of a pair of ultrasound and scintigraphic images concurrently obtained by the echo-scintigraphic probe.

主权项

1. An echo-scintigraphic probe (1) for medical applications, comprising:
an echographic probe (11) comprising a plurality of piezoelectric bands (11.1) extended along an axis y and adjacent to one another along an axis x perpendicular to said y axis, said y axis defining the scanning direction of the echographic probe; a scintigraphic probe (3) for the detection of gamma rays, comprising:
a collimator (14);a scintillation crystal (4) with a scintillation crystal section on a section plane parallel to the two directions x and y and perpendicular to an axis z;wherein the scintillation crystal (4), the collimator (14) and the echographic probe (11) are disposed in line, in the order along said z-axis, in such a way that they are integral with each other and such that:
the echographic probe (11) constitutes an end of said echo-scintigraphic probe (1) and is apt to contact, in use, a zone of biological tissue to be analysed; the orthogonal projection of said echographic probe (11) on said section plane overlaps said scintillation crystal section on an overlapping area smaller than or equal to the half of said scintillation crystal section;said echo-scintillation probe being characterized in that said collimator is a SLIT collimator with a plurality of collimation slits (14.1), and the piezoelectric bands (11.1) of said plurality of piezoelectric bands (11.1) are aligned to the collimation slits (14.1) of said plurality of collimation slits.