The emergence of ultrafast frame rates in ultrasonic imaging has been recently made possible by the development of new imaging modalities such as transient elastography. Data acquisition rates reaching more than thousands of images per second enable the real-time visualization of shear mechanical waves propagating in biological tissues, which convey information about local viscoelastic properties of tissues. The first proposed approach for reaching such ultrafast frame rates consists of transmitting plane waves into the medium. However, because the beamforming process is then restricted to the receive mode, the echographic images obtained in the ultrafast mode suffer from a low quality in terms of resolution and contrast and affect the robustness of the transient elastography mode. It is here proposed to improve the beamforming process by using a coherent recombination of compounded plane-wave transmissions to recover high-quality echographic images without degrading the high frame rate capabilities. A theoretical model is derived for the comparison between the proposed method and the conventional B-mode imaging in terms of contrast, signal-to-noise ratio, and resolution. Our model predicts that a significantly smaller number of insonifications, 10 times lower, is sufficient to reach an image quality comparable to conventional B-mode. Theoretical predictions are confirmed by in vitro experiments performed in tissue-mimicking phantoms. Such results raise the appeal of coherent compounds for use with standard imaging modes such as B-mode or color flow. Moreover, in the context of transient elastography, ultrafast frame rates can be preserved while increasing the image quality compared with flat insonifications. Improvements on the transient elastography mode are presented and discussed.

Coherent plane-wave compounding for very high frame rate ultrasonography and transient elastography

Synthetic Aperture Ultrasound Imaging

Some embodiments an infusion pump system can be configured to modify alarm limit parameters as the user's insulin load increases or decreases. Moreover, in particular embodiments, the infusion pump system can be configured to provide a “missed bolus” or “missed meal” alarm in response to the user's blood glucose characteristics, the user's insulin load information, or the like.

Infusion pump system and methods

A medication injector apparatus such as an injection pen. The injection pen includes a resettable, cartridge plunger drive assembly including an axially floating nut, a cartridge plunger engaging screw, and a drive clutch movable with the nut and which when rotated causes the screw to screw through the nut. When a cartridge assembly is mounted to the pen base, the floating nut and drive clutch are shifted proximally such that the drive clutch is in torque transmitting engagement with a rotatable drive member of the pen, such that rotation of that drive member results in drive screw advancement through the nut in the distal direction. When the cartridge assembly is not mounted to the pen base, the floating nut and drive clutch are biased distally to disengage the drive clutch from torque transmitting engagement with the rotatable drive member and to thereby allow the drive screw to be reset proximally through the nut to a position more retracted within the pen base. The injection pen also may include an injection clicker assembly having a collar arranged coaxially on a drive sleeve and which oscillates axially on the drive sleeve that rotates during medication dispensing to provide an audible clicking sound that indicates injecting use of the pen. The injection pen also may include a doseable quantity identifier that uses a rotational matrix and a sensor for electrically sensing the arrangement of the dose setting mechanism of the pen, which identifier may be part of a therapeutic dose indicating system that utilizes a cartridge recognizer to recognize a concentration of medication so as to allow an automatic determination of a therapeutic dose. The injection pen further may include an assembly for selectively rotating a drive sleeve of the pen, which assembly has a dial that rotates out during dose setting and which translates in without rotation during dose injecting.

Medication injector apparatus with drive assembly that facilitates reset

A delivery device includes first and second housing portions that selectively engage and disengage. A reservoir on one housing portion operatively engages a drive device and/or a needle inserting device on the other housing portion. Upon proper engagement of the housing portions, the reservoir operatively couples to the drive device and/or the needle inserting device. A first magnet on the first housing portion and a second magnet (or a magnetically-attractive material) on the second housing portion are positioned to magnetically interact with each other, upon operative engagement of the housing portions. A third magnet on the second housing portion may be opposed to the first magnet to help align the housing portions for connection. A magnet-responsive device may be on one or both housing portions to detect alignment and/or connection of the housing portions.

Infusion medium delivery device and method with drive device for driving plunger in reservoir

Conventional ultrasound systems acquire ultrasound data sequentially one image line at a time. The architecture of these systems is therefore also sequential in nature and processes most of the data in a sequential pipeline. This often makes it difficult to implement radically different imaging strategies on the platforms and makes the scanners less accessible for research purposes. A system designed for imaging research flexibility is the prime concern. The possibility of sending out arbitrary signals and the storage of data from all transducer elements for 5 to 10 seconds allows clinical evaluation of synthetic aperture and 3D imaging. This paper describes a real-time system specifically designed for research purposes. The system can acquire multichannel data in real-time from multi-element ultrasound transducers, and can perform some real-time processing on the acquired data. The system is capable of performing real-time beamforming for conventional imaging methods using linear, phased, and convex arrays. Image acquisition modes can be intermixed, and this makes it possible to perform initial trials in a clinical environment with new imaging modalities for synthetic aperture imaging, 2D and 3D B-mode, and velocity imaging using advanced coded emissions. The system can be used with 128-element transducers and can excite 128 transducer elements and receive and sample data from 64 channels simultaneously at 40 MHz with 12-bit precision. Two-to-one multiplexing in receive can be used to cover 128 receive channels. Data can be beamformed in real time using the system's 80 signal processing units, or it can be stored directly in RAM. The system has 16 Gbytes RAM and can, thus, store more than 3.4 seconds of multichannel data. It is fully software programmable and its signal processing units can also be reconfigured under software control. The control of the system is done over a 100-Mbits/s Ethernet using C and Matlab. Programs for doing, e.g., B-mode imaging can be written directly in Matlab and executed on the system over the net from any workstation running Matlab. The overall system concept is presented along with its implementation and examples of B-mode and in vivo synthetic aperture flow imaging.

/pdf/ultrasound-research-scanner-for-real-time-synthetic-aperture-19cgjcxyb5.pdf

Ultrasound research scanner for real-time synthetic aperture data acquisition

Digital signal processing is being employed more and more in modern ultrasound scanners. This has made it possible to do dynamic receive focusing for each sample and implement other advanced imaging methods. The processing, however, has to be very fast and cost-effective at the same time. Dedicated chips are used in order to do real time processing. This often makes it difficult to implement radically different imaging strategies on one platform and makes the scanners less accessible for research purposes. Here flexibility is the prime concern, and the storage of data from all transducer elements over 5 to 10 seconds is needed to perform clinical evaluation of synthetic and 3D imaging. This paper describes a real-time system specifically designed for research purposes. The purpose of the system is to make it possible to acquire multi-channel data in real-time from clinical multi-element ultrasound transducers, and to enable real-time or near real-time processing of the acquired data. The system will be capable of performing the processing for the currently available imaging methods, and will make it possible to perform initial trials in a clinical environment with new imaging modalities for synthetic aperture imaging, 2D and 3D B-mode and velocity imaging. The system can be used with 128 element transducers and can excite 128 channels and receive and sample data from 64 channels simultaneously at 40 MHz with 12 bits precision. Data can be processed in real time using the system's 80 signal processing units or it can be stored directly in RAM. The system has 24 GBytes RAM and can thus store 8 seconds of multi-channel data. It is fully software programmable and its signal processing units can also be reconfigured under software control. The control of the system is done over an Ethernet using C and Matlab. Programs for doing, e.g. B-mode imaging can directly be written in Matlab and executed on the system over the net from any workstation running Matlab. The overall system concept is presented and an example of a 20 lines script for doing phased array B-mode imaging is presented.

/pdf/experimental-ultrasound-system-for-real-time-synthetic-9esvvxzl9j.pdf

Experimental ultrasound system for real-time synthetic imaging

A device for injecting preparations is controlled by a sealed circuit block (10) containing integrated sensors (17; 21, 22, 23 24) which monitors selected parameters. Two pairs of integrated Hall elements (21, 23 and 22, 24) monitors movements relative to a sine formed magnetic field presented along the perimeter of a multipoled magnetised ring (7). The Hall elements in each pair are displaced 180° magnetically relative to each other and the two pairs of Hall elements are displaced 90° magnetically from each other. Each pair is coupled to a differential amplifier (25, 26) to provide a cosine and a sine signal, respectively. The sine signal is divided by the cosine signal to create a tangent signal as an entrance to a table showing the angle of the movement.

Electronically controlled device

The present invention relates to flow restrictors suitable for the controlled transfer of fluid from a first compartment to a second compartment. More specifically, the invention relates to a safety arrangement reducing the risks associated with diminished flow resistance through the flow restrictor. In a first aspect the present invention provides a flow restrictor comprising a flow-restricting channel formed between at least a first member and a second member arranged in contact with each other, the flow channel being arranged to form at least one generally U-formed portion with a pair of opposed first and second channel portions, and with a safety channel arranged between the opposed first and second channel portions. The safety channel provides a fluid communication with an exterior space relative to the flow restrictor.

Flow restrictor with safety feature

A device for injecting preparations is controlled by a sealed circuit block (10) containing integrated sensors (17; 21, 22, 23, 24) which monitors selected parameters. Two pairs of integrated Hall elements (21, 23 and 22, 24) monitors movements relative to a sine formed magnetic field presented along the perimeter of a multipoled magnetised ring (7). The Hall elements in each pair are displaced 180° magnetically relative to each other and the two pairs of Hall elements are displaced 90° magnetically from each other. Each pair is coupled to a differential amplifier (25, 26) to provide a cosine and a sine signal, respectively. The sine signal is divided by the cosine signal to create a tangent signal as an entrance to a table showing the angle of the movement.

Henrik Bendsen

Papers

Ultrasound research scanner for real-time synthetic aperture data acquisition

Experimental ultrasound system for real-time synthetic imaging

Electronically controlled device

Flow restrictor with safety feature

Electronically controlled injection or infusion device