Patent ID: 7263616

Claim:
An ultrasound imaging system comprising: an image acquisition subsystem for acquiring frames of image data; system memory storing said acquired frames of image data and operating instructions; a display subsystem for displaying images derived from said acquired frames of image data; a display processor for controlling said display subsystem to display frames of image data; a hard disk storing frames of image data, said operating instructions and a registry file containing encrypted data representing a list of all processes that are approved by the system manufacturer or service provider to run on the imaging system; an operating system that copies said operating instructions from said hard disk to said system memory when the imaging system is powered up; and a host computer programmed to control said image acquisition subsystem and said display subsystem in accordance with operating instructions transferred from said hard disk to said system memory, and further programmed with first and second computer virus protection features, said first computer virus protection feature comprising means for detecting a file having an attribute of a computer virus before said file is installed on said hard disk, and said second computer virus protection feature comprising means for monitoring an application program to be executed by said operating system but not yet copied from said hard disk to said system memory, said monitoring means comprising means for decrypting said encrypted data in said registry file and means for searching said decrypted data for an entry matching the identifier received from said operating system identifying a starting process of said application program to be executed by said operating system.