A Compact, Parameterized, Real-Time Beamformer, Benchmarked For Ultrasound Imaging

In an ultrasound system, a digital beamformer is a critical component, which beamforms the data in a desired direction. A 96 channel parameterized beamforming system is designed using VHDL tools. Incoming sampled signals are delayed using FIFO chains and receive apodization is applied using a single multiplier on a sample by sample basis. Each delayed channel data is then summed using a pipelined adder tree to give a beamformed line. The design is evaluated using a 96 channel hardware research platform (UARP), but can easily be extended to more than 96 channels for different imaging techniques. It supports variable channel count, aperture sizes and delays. It increases system frame rate as compared to PC based beamforming with just another 15% logic utilization and 3% memory resources using custom FPGA board, making it viable for real-time processing and measurements.