Patent ID: 11948345
Assignee: KONINKLIJKE PHILIPS N.V.
Field: Medical technology (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G  A | IPC A  G

Claim 0:
1. An ultrasound imaging system for ultrasonically inspecting biological tissue of a patient, the system comprising:
an ultrasound probe; and
a processor communicatively coupled to the ultrasound probe and to a source of previously-acquired ultrasound image data, wherein the processor is configured to:
provide a current ultrasound image of the biological tissue of the patient using current imaging parameter settings;
retrieve, from the source of previously-acquired ultrasound image data, previous ultrasound images associated with the patient and previous imaging parameter settings associated with the previous ultrasound images;
provide the current ultrasound image and the previous ultrasound images to at least one neural network, wherein the at least one neural network is trained to determine whether the current ultrasound image and the previous ultrasound images correspond to a same imaging plane through the biological tissue of the patient by performing operations comprising:
receive, by the at least one neural network, the current ultrasound image in parallel with the current imaging parameter settings provided as a settings vector comprising values of ultrasound imaging parameter settings;
convert the current ultrasound image, together with the settings vector, to a first feature vector,
convert at least some of the previous ultrasound images, together with respective previous imaging parameter settings of the previous imaging parameter settings, to respective second feature vectors,
compute respective distance metrics between the first feature vector and the respective second feature vectors, and
determine a similarity between the current ultrasound image and the at least some of the previous ultrasound images using the computed respective distance metrics;

cause a user interface to concurrently display the current ultrasound image and successive ones of the at least some of the previous ultrasound images as successive image pairs, wherein each of the successive ones of the at least some of the previous ultrasound images is displayed while determining whether the current ultrasound image and each successive one of the at least some of the previous ultrasound images correspond to the same imaging plane, and wherein the user interface dynamically updates to cycle through the successive image pairs;
identify, via the at least one neural network, a previous ultrasound image of the previous ultrasound images that corresponds to the same imaging plane as the current ultrasound image, wherein the identified previous ultrasound image is included in the at least some of the previous ultrasound images;
adjust one or more imaging parameters of the ultrasound imaging system to correspond to particular imaging parameter settings of the previous imaging parameter settings associated with the identified previous ultrasound image; and
produce an updated ultrasound image with the adjusted imaging parameters, wherein the updated ultrasound image is different from the current ultrasound image and the previous ultrasound images.