Medical digital imaging of challenges and new trends (1)

21st century digital imaging technologies gives us excellent diagnostic capabilities, image archiving and retrieval capabilities anytime, anywhere.

Since the early 1970s medical imaging digital technology, the importance of digital imaging are increasingly showing. Semiconductor devices in mixed-signal design capacity of some new development for imaging system delivers unprecedented electronic packaging density, resulting in significant development of medical imaging. At the same time, the embedded processor greatly improve medical was image-processing and real-time image display capabilities, enabling faster and more accurate diagnosis. The integration of these technologies as well as many of the emerging electronic health records standards for better patient care provides development dynamic.

This article describes various imaging methods of electronic design many challenges and some of the latest developments, including digital x-rays, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasonic system.

Digital x-ray systems

Conventional x-ray systems use a film/screen device to detect transmission to human body x-ray.

However, the detector system digital x-ray signal chain includes a photo detector arrays, the detector array will be converted to a charge of radiation. The following are some charge Integrator circuit and ADC (ADC) circuit for digital input. Figure 1 shows a typical digital x-ray systems map example.

Figure 1 digital x-ray systems chart example

Digital x-ray systems for performance and integrator and ADC module noise performance.

In order to lower power consumption conditions for higher image quality, a system to support a large number of signal path required electronic integrated innovation for technology standards set. It is composed of many of the detector system, high performance analog components, and perform advanced image processing tasks embedded processor, x-ray systems have many compared to the traditional advantages of the x-ray system. This combination supports greater dynamic range, so you can get a better image contrast and lower patient x-ray radiation levels at the same time produce electronic storage and transmission of digital images.

Ultrasonic system

Ultrasonic systems receive channel signal chain including low noise amplifier (LNA), variable gain amplifier (VGA), low-pass filter (LPF) and high speed and high precision ADC.

Immediately after the later of these components is digital beam generation, image and Doppler processing, and other signal processing software (Figure 2).

Figure 2 sample ultrasonic system chart