Real time 3-D ultrasound diagnostic imaging system including 3-D adaptive beamforming processing

Abstract

This paper describes the analog front end module and the computing architecture components of a fully digital real-time 3-D ultrasound system. The computing architecture is designed to allow for an efficient implementation of a 3-D adaptive beamformer that has the capability to improve the angular image resolution of a planar array by approximately four times. The complex 3-D beamforming structure is decomposed into two steps of line array beamformers and this kind of decomposition process for the 3-D beamformer allows for its efficient implementation into the highly parallelized multi-processor based computing architecture for real time 3-D ultrasound imaging applications providing 20 volumes per second at a full opening angle of 80 deg (azimuth and elevation). The main objective of this paper is to describe the details of the system processing requirements and design consideration for the computing architecture and provide the experimental results showing that the proposed implementation can achieve the targeted frame rate. An easy to use user interface in combination with a decision-support process provides the possibility for a rapid and automated diagnosis of internal injuries like bleeding or facilitates image guided surgery.