US 11,700,995 B2
Speckle removal in a pulsed fluorescence imaging system
Joshua D. Talbert, Salt Lake City, UT (US); and Donald M. Wichern, Ogden, UT (US)
Assigned to Cilag GmbH International
Filed by Cilag GmbH International, Zug (CH)
Filed on Feb. 24, 2020, as Appl. No. 16/799,202.
Claims priority of provisional application 62/864,242, filed on Jun. 20, 2019.
Prior Publication US 2020/0397249 A1, Dec. 24, 2020
Int. Cl. G02B 27/48 (2006.01); A61B 1/04 (2006.01); A61B 1/00 (2006.01); A61B 1/07 (2006.01); A61B 1/06 (2006.01); G02B 6/06 (2006.01); H04N 23/54 (2023.01); H04N 23/56 (2023.01); H04N 23/74 (2023.01); H04N 23/50 (2023.01)
CPC A61B 1/043 (2013.01) [A61B 1/0005 (2013.01); A61B 1/00006 (2013.01); A61B 1/000095 (2022.02); A61B 1/0638 (2013.01); A61B 1/0655 (2022.02); A61B 1/07 (2013.01); G02B 6/06 (2013.01); G02B 27/48 (2013.01); H04N 23/54 (2023.01); H04N 23/56 (2023.01); H04N 23/74 (2023.01); H04N 23/555 (2023.01)] 27 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A system for endoscopic visualization of a light deficient environment, the system comprising:
a light source that emits pulses of light according to a variable pulse cycle, wherein the light source comprises a plurality of electromagnetic radiation sources comprising:
an excitation source that emits electromagnetic radiation within a range from 750 nm to 835 nm; and
a visible source that emits electromagnetic radiation within a visible waveband of the electromagnetic spectrum;
a fiber optic bundle for communicating the pulses of light from the light source;
an image sensor comprising a pixel array that accumulates electromagnetic radiation and reads out a plurality of frames according to a sensor cycle comprising a plurality of blanking periods and a plurality of readout periods; and
a controller that synchronizes operations of the light source and the image sensor by synchronizing timing of the variable pulse cycle of the light source with timing of the sensor cycle of the image sensor, wherein synchronizing the timing comprises:
optimizing the variable pulse cycle such that the light source pulses only the visible source during a blanking period that immediately precedes the image sensor reading out a color frame; and
optimizing the variable pulse cycle such that the light source pulses only the excitation source during a blanking period that immediately precedes the image sensor reading out a fluorescence frame;
wherein the light deficient environment is illuminated at a threshold oscillation frequency to reduce speckle in the plurality of frames read out by the image sensor; and
wherein the plurality of frames is processed to render a video stream comprising a plurality of overlay frames, and wherein at least one overlay frame of the plurality of overlay frames comprises each of:
an overlay identifying a target structure, wherein the overlay is generated by a corresponding system trained to identify the target structure based on data from one or more of a plurality of fluorescence frames; and
dimensional data comprising one or more of a three-dimensional surface topology, a distance between objects, or a dimension of an object within the scene.