A heterogeneous ultrasound open scanner for the real-time implementation of computationally demanding imaging methods.

Ultrasound open scanners have recently boosted the development and validation of novel imaging techniques. They are usually split into hardware- or software-oriented systems, depending on whether they process the echo data using embedded FPGAs/DSPs or a GPU on a host PC. The goal of this work was to realize a high-performance heterogeneous open scanner capable of leveraging the strengths of both hardware and software-oriented systems.

Real-Time 3-D Spectral Doppler Analysis With a Sparse Spiral Array.

2-D sparse arrays may push the development of low-cost 3-D systems, not needing to control thousands of elements by expensive application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). However, there is still some concern about their suitability in applications, such as Doppler investigation, which inherently involve poor signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). In this article, a novel real-time 3-D pulsed-wave (PW) Doppler system, based on a 256-element 2-D spiral array, is presented.

Virtual Real-Time for High PRF Multiline Vector Doppler on ULA-OP 256.

The recent development of high-frame-rate (HFR) imaging/Doppler methods based on the transmission of plane or diverging waves has proposed new challenges to echographic data management and display. Due to the huge amount of data that need to be processed at very high speed, the pulse repetition frequency (PRF) is typically limited to hundreds hertz or few kilohertz. In Doppler applications, a PRF limitation may result unacceptable since it inherently translates to a corresponding limitation in the maximum detectable velocity.

Real-Time High-Frame-Rate Cardiac B-Mode and Tissue Doppler Imaging Based on Multiline Transmission and Multiline Acquisition.

Cardiovascular diseases, the leading cause of death in the world, are often associated with the dysfunction of the left ventricle. Even if, in clinical practice, the myocardial function is often assessed through visual wall motion scoring on B-mode images, quantitative techniques have been introduced, e.g.

Architecture of an Ultrasound System for Continuous Real-Time High Frame Rate Imaging.

High frame rate (HFR) imaging methods based on the transmission of defocused or plane waves rather than focused beams are increasingly popular. However, the production of HFR images poses severe requirements both in the transmission and the reception sections of ultrasound scanners. In particular, major technical difficulties arise if the images must be continuously produced in real-time, i.

Coded Spectral Doppler Imaging: From Simulation to Real-Time Processing.

Transmission of coded pulses and matched receive filtering can improve the ultrasound imaging penetration depth while preserving the axial resolution. This paper shows that the pulse compression technique may be integrated in a low-cost scanner to be profitably used also in spectral Doppler investigations. By operating on beamformed, demodulated, and down-sampled data in the frequency domain, a single digital signal processor is proved sufficient to perform both pulse compression and multigate spectral Doppler algorithms in real time.

ULA-OP 256: A 256-Channel Open Scanner for Development and Real-Time Implementation of New Ultrasound Methods.

Open scanners offer an increasing support to the ultrasound researchers who are involved in the experimental test of novel methods. Each system presents specific performance in terms of number of channels, flexibility, processing power, data storage capability, and overall dimensions. This paper reports the design criteria and hardware/software implementation details of a new 256-channel ultrasound advanced open platform.

A reconfigurable and programmable FPGA-based system for nonstandard ultrasound methods.

The availability of programmable and reconfigurable ultrasound (US) research platforms may have a considerable impact on the advancement of ultrasound systems technology; indeed, they allow novel transmission strategies or challenging processing methods to be tested and experimentally refined. In this paper, the ULtrasound Advanced Open Platform (ULA-OP), recently developed in our University laboratory, is shown to be a flexible tool that can be easily adapted to a wide range of applications. Five nonstandard working modalities are illustrated.

An automatic angle tracking procedure for feasible vector Doppler blood velocity measurements.

Two-dimensional angle-independent blood velocity estimates typically combine the Doppler frequencies independently measured by two ultrasound beams with known interbeam angle. A different dual-beam approach was recently introduced in which one (reference) beam is used to identify the flow direction, and the second (measuring) beam directly estimates the true flow velocity at known beam-flow angle. In this paper, we present a procedure to automatically steer the two beams along optimal orientations so that the velocity magnitude can be measured.

ULA-OP: an advanced open platform for ultrasound research.

The experimental test of novel ultrasound (US) investigation methods can be made difficult by the lack of flexibility of commercial US machines. In the best options, these only provide beamformed radiofrequency or demodulated echo-signals for acquisition by an external PC. More flexibility is achieved in high-level research platforms, but these are typically characterized by high cost and large size.

Voice quality monitoring: a portable device prototype.

This paper addresses the important issue of voice monitoring throughout the day under a clinical perspective. This problem is of great concern, for rehabilitation and from the assistive technology point of view. A prototype for a new portable device is proposed, implementing basic voice quality indexes (fundamental frequency F0, jitter, relative average perturbation RAP, noise) by means of robust high-resolution techniques.