Integrated video diagnostic center

An apparatus for medical inspection comprising a hand-held medical diagnostic instrument having a battery pack for providing energy to a light source for illuminating the target area, a housing, a charger for charger the battery pack that is integral with the housing and adapted to provide electric energy to the battery pack to charge the battery pack, a video adapter detachably coupled to the medical diagnostic instrument, video processing circuitry contained within the housing and an umbilicus for connecting the video adapter to the video processing circuitry.

This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional patent application 
Ser. No. 60/011,558 filed Feb. 13, 1996. 
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
1. Field of the Invention 
This invention relates generally to medical diagnostic instruments, and 
more specifically to an apparatus that integrates video diagnostic tools 
into a single unit. 
2. Discussion of the Related Art 
There are a number of hand-held diagnostic instruments that are used in the 
physician's office, such as otoscopes, ophthalmoscopes and scopes to 
examine the skin surface. Hand-held diagnostic instruments typically are 
equipped with a rechargeable battery pack which can be integrated into the 
handle of the instrument. The battery pack is recharged using transformers 
which may either be within a base unit in which the battery pack rests or 
the battery pack may be configured to plug directly into a standard 
electrical outlet. 
The use of video technology with medical diagnostic instruments is known in 
the art and has applications with a number of medical instruments, 
including otoscopes, ophthalmoscopes and the like. Hitachi and Circon 
offered such products since the early 1980's. These products included a 
video adapter unit with a CCD imager which could be connected to a 
hand-held instrument. The video adapter provides the physician with a 
video display of the target area. The patient and the physician's 
assistants or students can also view the monitor while the examination is 
taking place. The technology also provides a means to obtain a video 
record of the examination. The eletronic data that comprises the video 
image may also be transmitted to remote locations to facilitate 
telemedical procedures via modem, satellite transmission or other suitable 
electronic data transmission methods. 
The examination room of a modern day physician contains many various pieces 
of equipment and assorted medical supplies. The number and complexity of 
the equipment is increasing. New technologies are providing the medical 
team with better tools. However, a need exists to maintain an organized 
and efficient working area in order to allow the physician to make a 
correct diagnosis and to provide competent medical treatment. In a medical 
emergency, diagnostic and treatment tools need to be easily and quickly 
accessible to the medical team. 
The complexity of the medical office is compounded by the fact that the 
various instruments are housed in separate units. In the past, the battery 
packs of the instruments were charged either in their own holder having a 
charger therein or were plugged into an electrical outlet. The video 
processing circuitry was housed in a separate unit. In addition, the video 
monitor was housed in yet another unit. The medical examination room had a 
plethora of electrical cords, charging units, and video monitors scattered 
about which could cause confusion while the physician was attempting to 
conduct an examination, interfering with the physician's ability to make a 
quick and accurate diagnosis. 
OBJECTS AND SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a compact storage 
unit for video inspection equipment for use in a medical examination room. 
It is another object of the invention to combine a hand-held medical 
diagnostic instrument battery pack recharging unit with a video diagnostic 
unit in a convenient central storage unit. 
These objects are obtained by an apparatus for medical inspection 
comprising a hand-held medical diagnostic instrument having a battery pack 
for providing energy to a light source for illuminating the target area, a 
housing, means for charging the battery pack that are integral with the 
housing and adapted to provide electric energy to the battery pack to 
charge the battery pack, a video adapter detachably coupled to the medical 
diagnostic instrument, video processing circuitry contained within the 
housing and an umbilicus for connecting the video adapter to the video 
processing circuitry.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION 
Referring to FIG. 1, there is shown an integrated video diagnostic center 
embodying the teachings of the invention. The unit 10 has a housing 12 
that is suitable for wall mounting; however it is understood that the unit 
may be placed on a table, or mounted on a roll-around cart, or the unit 
may be attached to a wall in a boom mount configuration. Preferably the 
housing 12 is constructed of hard plastic or a similar material. The 
housing 12 has a recess 14 formed into the top surface 16. In the 
preferred embodiment, the recess 14 is substantially cylindrical in shape 
in order to accommodate and provide a cradle for a rechargeable battery 
pack 18 of the type which is used with a hand-held medical diagnostic 
instrument, such as an otoscope, ophthalmoscope or the like wherein the 
battery pack also serves as the handle for the instrument. The recess 14 
has an electrical connection integrated therein, which will be explained 
in greater detail below. The housing 12 has formed therein a convenient 
holder 20 for specula 22 that are used with the instrument. It will be 
understood that the housing may be formed to provide storage for other 
accessories such as swabs or currettes. 
Referring to FIG. 2, the bottom face 24 of the unit 10 is depicted. There 
is an umbilicus 26 that is connected at the distal end to a video adapter 
38 (shown in FIG. 4) which connects to a hand-held diagnostic instrument 
39. The umbilicus 26 serves to relay the video information from the video 
adapter 38 to the unit 10. The unit 10 houses electronic video processing 
circuitry which is well known in the art that processes the video 
information for suitable use, such as viewing a target area on a video 
monitor or for transmission of the video data to various data storage 
instruments (not shown). 
The bottom face 24 of the unit 10 also includes a calibration button 25. 
The user of the apparatus focuses the hand-held diagnostic instrument 39 
with the video adapter 38 (FIG. 4) attached onto a suitable calibration 
surface such as a white sheet of paper. The user depresses the calibration 
button 25, which when depressed provides an electrical signal to the video 
processing circuitry, thereby color calibrating the video signal to white. 
This calibration procedure ensures that any video information transferred 
to a video monitor or data storage unit is of suitable quality. In 
addition to performing color calibration, the video processing circuitry 
may also compensate for back lighting on a video screen. For instance, the 
hand-held medical instrument, such as an otoscope 39, that is in use with 
the video adapter 38 may form an image on the video screen that is 
circular due to the viewing area of the instrument 39. If the image that 
is projected onto a video screen is not properly compensated for back 
lighting, the image blooms on the video screen and is not of suitable 
quality. 
The video processing circuitry calibrates for both color and back lighting 
when the calibration button 25 is depressed. The video processing 
circuitry stores and maintains the calibration data in memory, even when 
the unit is powered down. This feature eliminates the need for the user to 
calibrate the unit each time the unit is used. Of course, one skilled in 
the art would recognize that the calibration button 25 can be located at 
any convenient location on the unit 10. 
The bottom face 24 of the unit 10 also has a video output connection 28. 
The video output connection 28 relays information from the video 
processing circuitry which is contained within the housing 12 to an 
external monitor or to a video tape machine (not shown). A second video 
output connection 30 is supplied to provide video information in the Y/C 
format for external uses. There is also supplied in the bottom face 24 an 
electrical input connection 32 to provide power to the unit 10. Electrical 
power from a power source is transformed to provide 2.5 v or 3.5 v to the 
battery pack recharger as is described below. In addition, electrical 
power is transformed to provide 12v to the video adapter 38. 
Referring again to FIG. 1, the rechargeable battery pack 18 rests in the 
recess 14. The battery pack 18 is provided with a female coupling 34 to 
provide contact with the unit 10 by connecting to male coupling 36 which 
is integral to the unit 10 in order to provide an electric current for 
recharging. It is understood that there are various configurations capable 
of performing the recharging of the battery pack 18. For example, a 
battery recharger may be surface mounted on the housing 12. The hand-held 
diagnostic instruments include rechargeable batteries to provide power, 
for example, to operate a light source in the instrument. Typically, the 
recharging function provides charge at either 2.5 volts or 3.5 volts. 
In use, the physician stores the hand-held medical diagnostic instrument in 
the recess 14 of the housing 12 during which time the battery pack 18 is 
charged. When the physician performs an examination that requires video 
technology, the physician removes the battery pack 18, connects the 
appropriate medical diagnostic instrument to the battery pack 18, and 
connects the video adapter 38 to the medical instrument 41 (FIG. 4). The 
physician will have a video monitor 92 in use or the physician may provide 
the video image to a remote location through telecommunications such as a 
modem (not shown). 
Referring now to FIG. 3, there is shown an additional embodiment of the 
present invention. The unit 40 has a housing 42 that is preferably formed 
from hard plastic. The housing 42 has a recess 44 in the top surface 46 
thereof to accept and cradle a rechargeable battery pack 48 of a hand-held 
medical diagnostic instrument, in this instance an ophthalmoscope is 
depicted. The recess 44 provides a connection to the battery pack 48 in 
order to facilitate recharging, similar to that shown in FIG. 1. An 
aperture 50 is formed in the front face 52 of the housing 42. The aperture 
50 is of sufficient size to accommodate a small video monitor 54, 
preferably a 5 inch or greater diagonal screen. 
The unit 40 provides video output connections, a power supply connection, a 
calibration button, and an umbilicus connecting the video adapter to the 
video processing circuitry contained within the housing 42 as shown in 
FIG. 2. It is understood that the output connections, power supply 
connection, calibration button and umbilicus may be placed on other faces 
of the housing 42 to facilitate placement of the unit 40 in the most 
convenient location. The preferred method is to wall mount the integrated 
video diagnostic center with the various connections located on the bottom 
face. 
The video information is relayed from the processing circuitry to the video 
screen 54 where the physician and/or patient can view the target area. 
This embodiment eliminates the need for a separate monitor in the 
examination room and thereby achieves the objective of further reducing 
the number of units in the examination room. 
In some instances, the physician may prefer to utilize video adapters with 
more than one type of hand-held diagnostic instrument, such as an 
ophthalmoscope and an otoscope, and the embodiment depicted in FIG. 4 
provides for the use of two. Of course, a plurality of instruments may be 
provided for. The unit 80 has a housing 82 preferably formed of hard 
plastic with two recesses 84--84 formed therein on the top surface 86. The 
housing 82 has an aperture 88 formed in the front face 90. A video monitor 
screen 92 is located in the aperture to provide the physician and patient 
with a view of the target area. There are also standard video control 
knobs 94 on the front face 90 of the unit 80 to allow the user to tune the 
monitor 92 to the desired picture quality as is known in the art. The unit 
80 has a three-way toggle switch 96 placed in the front face 90, the 
functionality of which will be described below. 
Referring now to FIGS. 4, 5 and 6, the unit 80 and the bottom face 71 of 
unit 80 are depicted. The unit 80 provides a coaxial video output 
connection 78, a Y/C video output connection 72, a power supply connection 
74 and two umbilica 76--76 connecting each video adapter 38--38 to the 
system bus video processing circuitry 102 contained within the housing 82. 
When the physician selects the middle position on the switch 96, the video 
unit is inoperative. A selection of the right or left position on the 
switch 96 determines which of the respective video adapters 38 is 
operative. 
There is a calibration button 77 located on the bottom face 71 of the unit 
80. As described above, the calibration button 77, when depressed by the 
user, sends an electrical signal to the video processing circuitry (FIG. 
6). As depicted in FIGS. 4, 5, & 6, the unit 80 has two umbilica 76--76 
leading to video adapters 38--38 attached thereto which are controlled by 
the switch 96. The calibration button 77 operates to calibrate the 
particular video adapter which has been selected by the positioning of the 
switch 96. The calibration information for the particular video adapter 
selected by the switch 96 is stored in the non-volatile memory of the 
video processing circuitry. Each of the video adapters can be separately 
calibrated and the calibration information for each is stored in the video 
processing circuitry in non-volatile memory. Once each video adapter is 
calibrated, the user need not recalibrate when switching from one adapter 
to the other because calibration information relating to each adapter is 
maintained in memory and the video processing circuitry is adapted to 
utilize memory depending upon the location of the switch 96. 
Referring now to FIG. 6, there is shown a block diagram of the video 
processing circuitry. The imagers 112 and 114 contained within the video 
adapters 38-38 relay information to the system bus 102 located within the 
housing (indicated by dashed line in FIG. 6). The system bus 102 relays 
the information to the microprocessing system 104 which contains a central 
processing unit 106. An electronic switch 108, corresponding to mechanical 
three way switch shown as 96 in FIG. 4, selects which of the two imager 
signals will be relayed to the monitor circuitry 110 for display on the 
monitor. The electronic switch 108 also relays calibration data for the 
appropriate imager from the microprocessing system 104 to the monitor 
circuitry 110. It is understood by one skilled in the art that there are 
various circuit configurations to accomplish the objective of displaying 
one or the other of two incoming video signals to a monitor. 
In use, the physician selects which hand-held instrument to use and removes 
it from the recess 84. The physician then selects the corresponding video 
adapter 38 and connects an instrument, such as a otoscope 39 or an 
episcope 41, to the video adapter 38. The three way switch 96 is moved to 
the corresponding position and the video adapter 38 is activated. The 
physician then performs the examination utilizing video capabilities. When 
completed, the three way switch 96 is returned to the center/off position, 
the video adapter 38 is removed, and the hand-held instrument 39 with the 
battery pack is returned to the recess 84 for storage and charging. 
While this invention has been explained with reference to the structure 
disclosed herein, it is not confined to the details as set forth. For 
example, the shape of the housing is shown for illustration purposes. One 
of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that many housing shapes are 
possible. Also, the battery pack is shown as being recharged in a recess. 
One skilled in the art will recognize that the battery pack could be 
mounted on a recharger on the surface of the housing. This application is 
intended to cover any modifications and changes as may come within the 
scope of the following claims.