Abstract: In a dematerialized ultrasound system, i.e. comprising a probe for transmitting and receiving ultrasound signals and a generic processing hardware made of one or more distributed processing units, the functions relating to the processing steps for the generation and processing of the images are in the form of software programs that encode instructions for the aforementioned generic hardware which make it capable of executing said processing steps. In order to make the computational and data interchange burden less heavy between the units of the distributed architecture of the system and to make the distribution of processing steps more flexible between one or more of the components of the distributed system, the programs are created under form of applications included in containers managed by a container management engine.

Abstract: A device and method for guiding surgical tools by ultrasonic imaging having means for acquiring a time sequence of 3D ultrasonic images of a target area, means for determining and tracking the position and orientation of a surgical tool and means for defining the direction of a characteristic axis of the tool corresponding to the detected position and orientation of the tool. The device further having means for determining the position of a working end of the tool along the characteristic axis, means for determining the relative position in space of each 3D image and the direction of the characteristic axis corresponding to each 3D image, and means for generating a 2D image defined by an image plane that intersects the corresponding 3D image of said time sequence.

Abstract: A device and method for guiding surgical tools by ultrasonic imaging having means for acquiring a time sequence of 3D ultrasonic images of a target area, means for determining and tracking the position and orientation of a surgical tool and means for defining the direction of a characteristic axis of the tool corresponding to the detected position and orientation of the tool. The device further having means for determining the position of a working end of the tool along the characteristic axis, means for determining the relative position in space of each 3D image and the direction of the characteristic axis corresponding to each 3D image, and means for generating a 2D image defined by an image plane that intersects the corresponding 3D image of said time sequence.