ECHO-SCINTIGRAPHIC PROBE FOR MEDICAL APPLICATIONS AND RELEVANT DIAGNOSTIC METHOD

摘要

The present invention relates to an echo-scintigraphic probe (1) for medical applications and the method of merging images. It is constituted by the union of an ultrasound probe (11) 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 (1), one is able to provide a double image of the object under examination. The ultrasound probe (11) is housed in the head (8), above the plane of the collimator (14) and kept projecting to favor the direct contact with the body part (20) of the patient (13) to be examined. The collimator (14) is able to obtain images of the biodistribution of a radiolabeled drug by radiation with frontal incidence, maintaining the characteristics of the ultrasound probe (11). The probe (1) is applicable to both clinical diagnosis and intraoperative diagnosis of cancer with the use of radio tracers. The invention also concerns a guided diagnostic method that realizes a functional integration of a pair of ultrasound and scintigraphic images concurrently obtained by the echo-scintigraphic probe (1) according to the invention.