VIDEO ENHANCEMENTS FOR LIVE SHARING OF MEDICAL IMAGES

摘要

In a telemedicine application there is live sharing of a video stream of medical images from a first site to a second site as well as a two-way conferencing capability. Live streaming of medical images in a live interactive session imposes many limitations on the video streaming process not found in conventional video conferencing. The network conditions are heterogeneous and low latency is required to support: 1) live streaming of medical images to a remote site and 2) supporting two-way conferencing in which a doctor or clinician at the remote site can provide real-time analysis or guidance on how to adjust a location of an imaging device. A suite of video enhancements is disclosed to improve the capability to sustain live video streaming of medical images in a telemedicine environment including a two-way conference between doctors or clinicians.

主权项

1. A system for enhancing a live video stream of high entropy content ultrasound medical images having a periodic biological rhythm, comprising:
a computing device having a processor and a memory hosting a video application; at least one module to enhance providing a live video stream of ultrasound medical images transmitted from a first site to a second site, the at least one module including at least one module from the group consisting of:
1) a network aware rate control module to adapt a bit rate of a variable bit rate video encoder to encode the video stream of ultrasound medical images based on network conditions;2) an adaptive intra refresh module performing adaptive Intra Refresh (AIR) including setting a frequency of constrained intra macroblocks of a transmitted video stream in a frame based on monitored network conditions and the detected changes in video content; and3) a N-interleaved vertical intra refresh module to interleave vertical intra macroblocks horizontally across a set of frames having intra macroblocks, the interleaving being performed within an intra refresh period; and a periodic movement multiple reference frame module utilizing multiple reference frames to encode high entropy content medical images having a periodic biological rhythm associated with the periodic flow of blood in a patient.