Patent ID: 11957517
Assignee: UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER
Field: Medical technology (Instruments)
Classification: CPC A  G | IPC A  G

Claim 14:
15. An apparatus comprising:
a support fora body part comprising a hand and/or one or more fingers; an ultrasound transducer; a coupling medium configured to acoustically couple the ultrasound transduced to a selected portion of the body part and transmit ultrasound energy from the ultrasound transducer into the body part and from the body part into the ultrasound transducer; a transducer holder configured to hold the ultrasound transducer; a motor coupled with the transducer holder and configured to move the transducer holder and thus the ultrasound transducer relative to the body part along a selected trajectory;
a control coupled with the transducer holder and the ultrasound transducer and configured to cause the ultrasound transducer to produce selected ultrasound images of the body part;
a computer-implemented ultrasound engine coupled with the transducer and configured to process said ultrasound images into processed images;
a computer-implemented segmentation engine configured to apply segmentation algorithms to said processed images to thereby identify tendons and scar tissue in said body part represented in said processed images;
a computer-implemented quantification engine coupled with said segmentation engine and configured to quantify the tendons and scar tissue identified by the segmentation engine and produce quantification results;
a storage storing a training image set and known relationships between tendon and scar tissue parameters and parameters related to healing;
a computer-implemented results generator coupled with said quantification engine and said training image set and known relationship and configured to cause an interaction between said quantification results and said known relationship and produce results indicative of properties of said body part.