SUBJECT INFORMATION ACQUISITION APPARATUS
A subject information acquisition apparatus includes an electromechanical conversion element which receives an elastic wave generated by irradiating with an electromagnetic wave an object in a subject and converts the received elastic wave into an electric signal; a moving device moves the electromechanical conversion element; a signal processing device calculates an image value based on the electric signal. The moving device moves the electromechanical conversion element from a first position to a second position, the electromechanical conversion element receives the elastic wave at the first position and converts the received elastic wave into a first electric signal, and receives the elastic wave at the second position and converts the received elastic wave into a second electric signal; when the electromechanical conversion element is situated at the second position, the signal processing device calculates a first image value at a specified position inside the subject based on the first electric signal.
This application is a Continuation of co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/570,997, filed Aug. 9, 2012; which is a Continuation of co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/999,302 filed Dec. 15, 2010, which becomes U.S. Pat. No. 8,920,321, issued Dec. 30, 2014, which is a National Phase application of International Application No. PCT/JP2009/061059, filed Jun. 11, 2009, which claims the benefit of Japanese Patent Application Nos. 2008-159313, filed Jun. 18, 2008, and 2009-029953, filed Feb. 12, 2009, which are hereby incorporated by reference herein in their entirety.
TECHNICAL FIELDThe present invention relates to a subject information acquisition apparatus to acquire an image based on an elastic wave emitted from a subject.
BACKGROUND ARTA photoacoustic imaging method, which is a bioinformation acquisition method, is a method of detecting an acoustical wave induced in the internal portion of a living body by radiating a pulsed laser light to the living body, thereby imaging the three-dimensional structure of the internal portion of the living body. The acoustical wave is generated by the radiation of the pulsed laser light to a test object in a living body to cause the thermal expansion of the test object in the internal portion of the living body. Moreover, by changing the wavelength of the wavelength of the pulsed laser light, it is possible to visualize the distributions of specific substances, such as hemoglobin and glucose in blood, having an absorption band of the wavelength. Consequently, because a potential tumor, such as the abnormal growth of new blood vessels, can be non-invasively determined, the photoacoustic imaging method has been seen as a potential device for screening for breast cancer or the early detection thereof in recent years.
A conventional concrete procedure of the photoacoustic imaging method is disclosed in, for example, Published Japanese Translation of a PCT Application No. 2001-507952 as follows.
(1) Two-dimensionally arranged electromechanical conversion elements (transducers) are located on the surface of a test body, and single pulse electromagnetic energy is radiated to the test body.
(2) Just after the radiation of the electromagnetic energy, the signal received by each electromechanical conversion element is sampled to be stored.
(3) As to a point r′ in the test body to be visualized, the delay time necessary for an acoustical wave to reach the position r of each electromechanical conversion element i from the point r′ is calculated, and the signal of each electromechanical conversion element i corresponding to the calculated delay time is added to one another to be set as the image value at the point r′.
(4) The step (3) is repeated to each point r′ to be imaged.
Moreover, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-021380 discloses the method of reconstructing both of a photoacoustic image and an ordinary ultrasound echo image by using common one-dimensionally arranged electromechanical conversion elements, and the configuration of arranging an illumination system using glass fibers between the one-dimensionally arranged electromechanical conversion elements. Since the method disclosed in this Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-021380 uses the one-dimensionally arranged electromechanical conversion elements, the method is required to repeat the reconstruction by mechanically moving the one-dimensionally arranged electromechanical conversion elements into the direction perpendicular to the arrangement direction of the transducers in order to reconstruct a three-dimensional image.
In order to reconstruct the three-dimensional image by using the photoacoustic imaging method, it is desirable to use two-dimensionally arranged electromechanical conversion elements in order to reduce the direction dependency of an image resolution. As the methods for obtaining a photoacoustic image in a wide area on the premise of the use of the two-dimensionally arranged electromechanical conversion elements, the following methods can be considered: (1) the method of arranging electromechanical conversion elements on the whole wide area, and (2) the method of locating a comparatively small-scale electromechanical conversion element group (a group composed of arranged electromechanical conversion elements) in a step and repeat system to perform mechanical scanning. However, the method (1) has the problem of the difficulty of commercial viability in cost owing to the scale enlargement of the receiving system of the method. Moreover, the method (2) has the problem of the occurrence of the unevenness of sensitivity between the central part and the end parts of the two-dimensionally arranged electromechanical conversion elements. Moreover, the method (2) has the problem of the waste of time to locate the electromechanical conversion element group to the next positions one by one in the step and repeat system.
DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTIONAccordingly the present invention is directed to provide a bioinformation acquisition apparatus capable of performing the mechanically scanning using an electromechanical conversion element group to receive elastic waves in a wide inspection area, and capable of inputting a signal having uniform sensitivity and a high SN ratio at a high speed.
An aspect of the present invention is a bioinformation acquisition apparatus, comprising: an electromechanical conversion element group including a plurality of arranged electromechanical conversion elements, each receiving an elastic wave emitted from a test object in a test body to convert the received elastic wave into an electric signal; a moving device moving the electromechanical conversion element group into an arrangement direction of the electromechanical conversion elements; an adding device adding electric signals transmitted from the plurality of electromechanical conversion elements; and a processing device reconstructing an image of an inner part of the test body based on an added signal added by the adding device; wherein the moving device moves the electromechanical conversion element group so that the electromechanical conversion element group situated at a first position at a first time point may be situated at a second position at a second time point, the electromechanical conversion element group receives elastic waves emitted from the test object at the first time point at the first position, and receives the elastic waves emitted from the test object at the second time point at the second position, and the adding device adds an electric signal transmitted from a first electromechanical conversion element corresponding to a specified position of the test body among electric signals of the elastic waves received at the first time point and an electric signal transmitted from a second electromechanical conversion element corresponding to the specified position among electric signals of the elastic waves received at the second time point.
According to the aspect of the present invention, the elastic waves in a wide inspection area are received by the mechanically scanning using the electromechanical conversion element group, and consequently the signals having uniform sensitivity and high SN ratios can be input at a high speed.
Further features of the present invention will become apparent from the following description of exemplary embodiments with reference to the attached drawings.
The elastic waves in the present invention include the waves called as an acoustic wave, an ultrasound, an acoustical wave, and a photoacoustic wave, and include, for example, an acoustical wave generated in the inner part of a test body when a light, which is an electromagnetic wave, such as a near infrared ray, is radiated to the inner part of the test body. Moreover, the elastic waves emitted from a test body include an elastic wave generated at some portion or at a certain portion of the test body. That is, a bioinformation acquisition apparatus of the present invention includes a photoacoustic imaging apparatus, which radiates a light, being an electromagnetic wave, to the inner part of a test body and receives an acoustical wave generated in the inner part of the test body with a probe to display a tissue image of the inner part of the test body.
A laser can be used as an electromagnetic wave source in the present invention, and even electromagnetic waves emitted from a light emitting diode, a xenon lamp, and the like can be generally used in the present invention besides the laser light.
First EmbodimentIn the following, a first embodiment of the present invention will be described. A bioinformation acquisition apparatus according to the present embodiment includes a light source, as an electromagnetic wave source for generating a pulsed laser; and an electromechanical conversion element group, which includes a plurality of arranged electromechanical conversion elements, each receiving an acoustical wave, as an elastic wave generated by radiating a pulsed laser from the light source to a test object in a test body, and converting the received acoustical wave into an electric signal. Furthermore, the bioinformation acquisition apparatus includes a moving device for moving the electromechanical conversion element group into the arrangement direction of the electromechanical conversion elements, an adding device for adding the electric signals transmitted from the plurality of electromechanical conversion elements to one another, and a processing device for obtaining image information on the basis of the added signal added by the adding device.
In the following, the embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the attached drawings.
The light source 8 is desirably a pulsed laser light source capable of generating a pulsed laser light in the order of several nanoseconds to several hundred nanoseconds in order to efficiently generate an acoustical wave from the test object. In this case, the wavelength of the pulsed laser light can be within a range of from 400 nm to 1600 nm, both inclusive. Furthermore, the wavelength can be more preferably within a region of from 700 nm to 1100 nm, in which the absorption of the laser light in the living body is little. Various lasers, such as a solid state laser, a gas laser, a dye laser, and a semiconductor laser, can be used as the laser.
Next, the method of inputting an acoustic signal in a wide area 3 in conformity with the receiving principle will be described with reference to
Moreover, the electromechanical conversion elements 1 of the present embodiment are required to detect the acoustical wave to be generated from a test object 13 in the test body 6 that has absorbed a part of the energy of the light radiated from the light source 8 to the test body 6 to convert the detected acoustical wave into the electric signal 9. Accordingly, it is desirable to optimize the frequency band that the electromechanical conversion elements 1 can receive according to the size of the test object 13 in the test body 6.
Any detector, such as a transducer using a piezoelectric effect, a transducer using the resonance of light, and a transducer using a change of a capacity, as long as the detector can detect an acoustical wave, may be used as the electromechanical conversion elements 1. For example, if the acoustical waves generated from variously sized test objects are received, then a transducer using the changes of capacities of a wide detection frequency band or a plurality of transducers having different detection bands can be used.
At the time of t=1, the test object 13 irradiated by the light source 8a generates an acoustical wave, and the acoustical wave reaching the position of a point P, which is a specified position in the test body 6, is converted into an electric signal 9a by a first electromechanical conversion element to be stored in a temporary storage memory 14a.
At the time of t=3, the acoustical wave of the test object 13 irradiated by the light source 8b is converted into an electric signal 9b at the point P, which is the same specified position in the test body 6 as the point P at the time of t=1, by a third electromechanical conversion element to be stored in a temporary storage memory 14b.
Similarly, at the time point of t=5, the acoustical wave is converted into an electric signal 9c at the point P, the specified position, by a fifth electromechanical conversion element to be stored in a temporary storage memory 14c. At this time, the severally stored electric signals 9 are signals for a certain period after the laser radiation, and are stored by being converted into one-dimensional digital waveform signal by an AD converter (not illustrated).
In the present embodiment, the moving device moves the electromechanical conversion element group 2 so that the electromechanical conversion element group 2 may be situated as the electromechanical conversion element groups 2a, 2b, and 2c at the time of the time points t=1, t=3, and t=5, respectively.
That is, the moving device moves the electromechanical conversion element group 2 so that the acoustical wave at the point P, the specified position in the test body 6, may be received by the first, third, and fifth electromechanical conversion elements at the time of the time points t=1, t=3, and t=5, respectively.
In the present embodiment, the moving device typically moves the electromechanical conversion element group 2 so that the acoustical waves reaching the specified position in the test body 6 at the predetermined time points can be received by the different electromechanical conversion elements. By moving the electromechanical conversion element group 2 in this way, the moving device can add the electric signals 9 to one another, which have been caused by the acoustical waves and reach the specified position in the test body 6 at the predetermined time points.
The movement of the electromechanical conversion element group 2 by the moving device of the present embodiment is based on the following consideration. That is, there is the problem that the receiving position of an acoustical wave moves during the reception of the acoustical wave because the electromechanical conversion element group 2 is being continuously moved while the acoustical wave is received. However, the reception time of the acoustical wave is as an extremely short time here as in the extent of 50 ρs to 100 ρs at the most after the radiation of a pulsed laser light. On the other hand, the period of the radiation of the pulsed laser light is generally limited to a slow period in the extent of 100 ms in order to avoid damaging the living body. Accordingly, the electromechanical conversion elements should be moved at a low speed in accordance with the slow radiation period, and consequently almost no differences in effect are produced between the case of receiving the acoustical wave while moving continuously and the case of receiving the acoustical wave in the state of being stopping. That is, the time points of light radiation, acoustical wave generation, and acoustical wave reception can be regarded to be at the same time. By receiving the acoustical wave while being continuously moving in such a way, the moving time of the electromechanical conversion element group 2 and the time for locating the electromechanical conversion element group 2 can be omitted and high speed signal inputting can be performed.
The stored one-dimensional digital waveform signals are parallely read out at an appropriate time point, and are added to one another as a one-dimensional waveform signal by an addition circuit 15. By such a process, a plurality of times of acoustic signals reaching the same point P from the same test object 13 is added to one another, and the SN ratio of the received signal at the point P can be improved. Moreover, in view of the same point P on the test body 6 at this time, the added acoustic signals are the added acoustical wave signals illustrated at relatively different positions as illustrated in
Incidentally, this feature can be realized by the movement into the arrangement direction in both of one-dimensionally arranged electromechanical conversion elements and two-dimensionally arranged electromechanical conversion elements. In the case of the two-dimensionally arranged electromechanical conversion elements, a speeding-up effect can be obtained by the parallel processing of a supposed plurality of one-dimensionally arranged electromechanical conversion elements.
Moreover, the example of the movement of the light source 8 as the light sources 8a to 8c as the changes of the time points from t=1 to t=5 is illustrated in
Incidentally, the acoustic waves reaching the point P among the acoustic waves generated from the test object 13 have been described with reference to
The contents described above are summarized as follows.
The moving device moves the electromechanical conversion element group 2 so that the electromechanical conversion element group 2a situated at the first position at the first time point (e.g. t=1) may move as the electromechanical conversion element group 2b situated at the second position at the second time point (e.g. t=3).
The light source 8a radiates a pulsed laser to the test object 13 at the first time point (t=1), and the electromechanical conversion element group 2 receives the acoustical wave from the test object 13 as the electromechanical conversion element group 2a at the first position at the same first time point. Furthermore, the light source 8b radiates a pulsed laser to the test object 13 at the second time point (t=3), and the electromechanical conversion element group 2 receives the acoustical wave generated from the test object 13 as the electromechanical conversion element group 2b at the second position at the same second time point.
The addition circuit 15, which is the adding device, adds the following electric signals 9a and 9b to each other. That is, the electric signal 9a is an electric signal generated by the first electromechanical conversion element (first transducer) corresponding to the specified position (point P) in the test body 6 among the acoustical waves received at the first time point (t=1). The electric signal 9b is the electric signal generated by the second electromechanical conversion element (third transducer) corresponding to the specified position (point P) among the acoustical waves received at the second time point (t=3).
Next, the concrete configuration of a received signal processing unit will be described with reference to
The light source 8 is controlled to emit a light by a laser control circuit 25 in synchronization with the position of the electromechanical conversion element group 2, and acoustical wave signals within a certain time after laser light emission are parallely input from the four-by-four reception elements. Signals S00, S01, S02, and S03 from the four elements (four elements situated at the most inner part in the normal line direction of the paper surface) arranged in the moving direction indicated by an arrow in
First, the processing corresponding to the temporary storage memory Ma will be described in order. Each block in the flow chart is processed one by one in each period T for receiving an acoustical wave. At a time point t=4m*T, the temporary storage memory Ma transfers the contents thereof to the processor 21, and inputs and stores the signal S00 as it is without performing the addition processing thereof. At a time point t=(4m+1)*T, the temporary storage memory Ma adds the signal S01 to the contents of the temporary storage memory Ma as a one-dimensional waveform and restores the added contents. At a time point t=(4m+2)*T, the temporary storage memory Ma adds the signal S02 to the contents of the temporary storage memory Ma as a one-dimensional waveform and restores the added contents. At a time point t=(4m+3)*T, the temporary storage memory Ma adds the signal S03 to the contents of the temporary storage memory Ma as a one-dimensional waveform and restore the added contents. After the completion of the processing at a time point t=(4m+3)*T, the temporary storage memory Ma increments the letter m to return its processing to that at the time point t=4m*T again. The addition result of the four transducer signals are stored in the temporary storage memory Ma every four periods by performing the processing described above, and the stored contents are transferred to the processor 21.
The processing similar to that of the temporary storage memory Ma is executed to the temporary storage memory Mb at the time point that shifts from that of the processing to the temporary storage memory Ma by the period T as illustrated in the flow chart of
If the acoustic signals are input in this way and the accumulation additions are performed to each position of the test body 6, as illustrated by the numerals at the lowermost step, signals can be added to one another four times to each area except for the first portion. Since about twofold improvement of SN ratios can be expected by the four times of signal additions, a three-dimensional image having an improved SN ratio can be produced by inputting the portion in which four times of additions are performed into the processor 21 as a usable input area to use the area for image reconstruction.
According to the present embodiment of the present invention, signals having uniform sensitivity and high SN ratios can be input at high speeds in a bioinformation acquisition apparatus, which mechanically scans an electromechanical conversion element group to input an acoustic signal of a wide inspection area.
Second EmbodimentNext, a second embodiment of the present invention will be described. The second embodiment uses an electromechanical conversion element group different from that of the first embodiment. The other respects of the second embodiments are the same as those of the first embodiment.
As illustrated in
Furthermore, in the case of manufacturing an electromechanical conversion element group having a large number of elements, the method of forming the large electromechanical conversion element group by joining a plurality of small electromechanical conversion element groups, which can be easily manufactured, together is adopted. Also in this case, if the boundary parts 57 of small electromechanical conversion element groups are configured as the gap portion like the ones mentioned above as illustrated in
According to the present embodiment, as described above, various inputting methods can be performed by devising the arrangement of the electromechanical conversion elements and the time point of the inputting of acoustic signals. Generally, the repetition period of acoustic signal inputting is frequently limited to be a certain period or less in order to avoid damaging a test body. Accordingly, in the case where high speed inputting is necessary, the method of enlarging the movement speed to decrease the addition times is led to be selected, and in the case where high quality signal inputting is necessary, the method of reducing the movement speed to increase the addition times is led to be selected.
Third EmbodimentNext, a third embodiment of the present invention will be described. The third embodiment implements the addition processing in the direction perpendicular to the moving direction of an electromechanical conversion element group besides the addition processing in the moving direction of the electromechanical conversion element group. The other respects are the same as those of the first and second embodiments.
If acoustic signal inputting is performed by using an electromechanical conversion element group arranging M electromechanical conversion elements in the moving direction and N electromechanical conversion elements in the direction perpendicular to the moving direction, then the number of signal waveforms corresponding to the stripe length of the width of the N electromechanical conversion elements have been input into the processor 21 at the time point when a time of movement has been completed. Next, if an adjacent stripe is set so that a part of the adjacent stripe may overlap with the former stripe and an acoustical wave signal is taken into the processor 21 by a similarly continuous movement, then the addition of the data in the overlapping region can be performed on the processor 21.
The situation will be described with reference to
By performing accumulation additions not only in the moving direction but also in the direction (stripe moving direction) perpendicular to the moving direction by the use of the two-dimensionally arranged electromechanical conversion elements as described above, the number of added signals becomes large, and consequently the SN ratios of the added signals are improved. Since also the illumination unevenness can be smoothed in two dimensions, the image reconstruction having a better quality can be performed.
Since the image reconstruction processing to input signals is frequently linear processing or nearly linear processing, an equivalent advantage can be obtained by adding three-dimensional voxel images after reconstruction in place of adding input signals directly. In this case, the image reconstruction in the stripe region 4 can be performed while inputting the acoustic signals in the stripe region 4, the waste time for waiting the inputting of an adjacent stripe can be lessened.
Fourth EmbodimentNext, a fourth embodiment of the present invention will be described. The fourth embodiment integrates an one-dimensionally arranged transmitting and receiving elements (second electromechanical conversion element group) for ultrasound echo signals and an electromechanical conversion element group (first electromechanical conversion element group) receiving an acoustical wave generated by radiating an electromagnetic wave. The present embodiment is also effective for diagnostic equipment generating an ultrasound echo image and a photoacoustic image at the same time. The other respects of the present embodiment are the same as those of the other embodiments.
In the photoacoustic imaging method, it is desirable to use two-dimensionally arranged electromechanical conversion elements for realizing the isotropy of photoacoustic image resolution. It is also desirable against an ultrasound echo image to use a two-dimensionally arranged ultrasound transmitting and receiving elements, but, since the frequency of an ultrasound is relatively high, it is necessary to use many small transmitting and receiving elements, and consequently two-dimensional arrangement causes the problems of the enlargement in size of a signal processing circuit and the enlargement of cost. Accordingly, many practical apparatus input three-dimensional ultrasound echo signals while continuously moving one-dimensionally arranged transmitting and receiving elements. Accordingly, as illustrated in FIG. 20, by forming an integrated structure 73 of one-dimensionally arranged transmitting and receiving elements 71 for ultrasound echo signals and an electromechanical conversion element group 72 arranging electromechanical conversion elements in two dimensions and by continuously moving the integrated structure 73, high quality photoacoustic images and ultrasound echo images can be reconstructed at the same time.
While the present invention has been described with reference to exemplary embodiments, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited to the disclosed exemplary embodiments. The scope of the following claims is to be accorded the broadest interpretation so as to encompass all such modifications and equivalent structures and functions.
Claims
1. A bioinformation acquisition apparatus, comprising:
- an electromechanical conversion element group including a plurality of arranged electromechanical conversion elements, each receiving an elastic wave emitted by irradiating an electromagnetic wave to a test object in a test body to convert the received elastic wave into an electric signal;
- a moving device moving the electromechanical conversion element group into an arrangement direction of the electromechanical conversion elements;
- an adding device adding electric signals transmitted from at least two or more electromagnetic transducers of the plurality of electromechanical conversion elements, wherein
- the moving device moves the electromechanical conversion element group so that the electromechanical conversion element group situated at a first position at a first time point may be situated at a second position at a second time point,
- the electromechanical conversion element group receives elastic waves at the first position, the elastic waves emitted by irradiating the electromagnetic wave to the test object at the first time point, and receives the elastic waves at the second position, the elastic waves emitted by irradiating the electromagnetic wave to the test object at the second time point, and
- the adding device adds an electric signal transmitted from a first electromechanical conversion element corresponding to a specified position of the test body among electric signals of the elastic waves received at the first time point, and an electric signal transmitted from a second electromechanical conversion element corresponding to the specified position among electric signals of the elastic waves received at the second time point.
Type: Application
Filed: Nov 6, 2018
Publication Date: Mar 7, 2019
Inventor: Haruo Yoda (Nishitama-gun)
Application Number: 16/182,013