A flexible multichannel FPGA and PC-based ultrasound system for medical imaging research: Initial phantom experiments

被引：8
作者：
Assef, Amauri Amorin [1 ,2 ]
Maia, Joaquim Miguel [2 ,3 ]
Costa, Eduardo Tavares [4 ]
机构：
[1] Graduate Program in Energy Systems – PPGSE, Electrical Engineering Department – DAELT, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná – UTFPR, Av. Sete de Setembro, 3165, CEP, Curitiba, PR
[2] Graduate Program in Electrical and Computer Engineering – CPGEI, Electrical Engineering Department – DAELT, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná – UTFPR, Av. Sete de Setembro, 3165, CEP, Curitiba, PR
[3] Graduate Program in Biomedical Engineering – PPGEB, Electronic Engineering Department – DAELN, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná – UTFPR, Curitiba, PR
[4] Biomedical Engineering Department, School of Electrical and Computing Engineering – DEB/FEEC, Biomedical Engineering Centre – CEB Universidade Estadual de Campinas – UNICAMP, Campinas, SP
来源：
Revista Brasileira de Engenharia Biomedica | 2015年 / 31卷 / 03期
关键词：
Beamforming; FPGA; Open-Platform; Ultrasound research;
D O I：
10.1590/2446-4740.0700
中图分类号：
学科分类号：
摘要：
Introduction: In this paper, we present the initial results of a fully programmable 128-channel FPGA and PC‑based system that has been developed for medical ultrasound (US) imaging research in our University laboratory (Federal University of Technology - Paraná, Brazil). Methods: In order to demonstrate the feasibility of the US research system, two applications involving unfocused plane wave transmission and conventional B-mode beamforming were evaluated using a commercial tissue-mimicking phantom and a 3.2 MHz 128-element convex array transducer. Results: Testing results show that the hardware platform is able to synthesize arbitrary pulses up to 100 Vpp with second order harmonic distortion below 80 dB. For the first application, a 41-tap digital FIR bandpass filter was applied to the acquired RF echoes, sampled at 40 MHz with 12-bit resolution, to improve the noise suppression. In the second application, after offline apodization weighting, filtering, delay-and-sum processing, envelope detection, log compression and scan conversion, the reconstructed B-mode image is displayed over a 50 dB range. Conclusion: The presented results indicate that the open US imaging system can be used to support different ultrasonic transmission and reception strategies, which typically cannot be implemented in conventional data flow architectures that are mainly based on hardware. © 2015 Sociedade Brasileira de Engenharia Biomedica.
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页码：277 / 281
页数：4
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