To improve the visualization of a needle-like appliance, like a biopsy needle, to be inserted into the human body by providing the system with a means for mapping an image frame of display data to an image frame of a pixel intensity value in order to make display on a display monitor.
System control is concentrated to a host computer 48 to control various sub-systems. A scan converter 14 has a B mode acoustic line memory 44 for scan conversion of B mode data, a color acoustic line memory 45 for scan conversion of color flow data and an X-Y memory 46 for storing the respective frames of the data after the scan conversion in the respective memories of a bank consisting of the plurality of frame memories. The data to be stored in the acoustic line memory 45 is converted to pixel display data of Cartesian coordinates adequately subjected to scaling. A video processor 16 transfers the B mode data to a gray map and maps the color flow data to a color map for the purpose of video display.
WASHBURN MICHAEL J
ISHRAK SYED OMAR
SEYED-BOLORFOROSH MIR SAID
