Real-time synthetic aperture imaging: opportunities and challenges

Nikolov, Svetoslav Ivanov; Tomov, Borislav Gueorguiev; Jensen, Jørgen Arendt

doi:10.1109/acssc.2006.355018

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…In SPA imaging with the described system, the bottleneck limiting the frame rate is the immense computational load required in synthetic beamforming. Our current efforts to improve the computational speed include utilizing a GPU and an FPGA for beamforming operations [25], [26]. New imaging methods for faster imaging, for example, CPA with multiline acquisition (CPA-MLA) [27]–[29] and flash imaging with multiple angles [30], are also being implemented.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Volumetric real-time imaging using a CMUT ring array

Choe

Oralkan

Nikoozadeh

et al. 2012

IEEE Trans. Ultrason., Ferroelect., Freq. Contr.

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A ring array provides a very suitable geometry for forward-looking volumetric intracardiac and intravascular ultrasound imaging. We fabricated an annular 64-element capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) array featuring a 10-MHz operating frequency and a 1.27-mm outer radius. A custom software suite was developed to run on a PC-based imaging system for real-time imaging using this device. This paper presents simulated and experimental imaging results for the described CMUT ring array. Three different imaging methods—flash, classic phased array (CPA), and synthetic phased array (SPA)—were used in the study. For SPA imaging, two techniques to improve the image quality—Hadamard coding and aperture weighting—were also applied. The results show that SPA with Hadamard coding and aperture weighting is a good option for ring-array imaging. Compared with CPA, it achieves better image resolution and comparable signal-to-noise ratio at a much faster image acquisition rate. Using this method, a fast frame rate of up to 463 volumes per second is achievable if limited only by the ultrasound time of flight; with the described system we reconstructed three cross-sectional images in real-time at 10 frames per second, which was limited by the computation time in synthetic beamforming.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It has been reported that beamformers implemented with a GPU [25] or an FPGA [26] improve the ultrasound imaging system performance. New software performing computations on a GPU platform is under development, and an FPGA-based beamformer is also under consideration for our system.…”

Section: Real-time Imaging Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Volumetric real-time imaging using a CMUT ring array

Choe

Oralkan

Nikoozadeh

et al. 2012

IEEE Trans. Ultrason., Ferroelect., Freq. Contr.

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“…The synthetic aperture method requires a lot of calculations, and as a result, such equipment is expensive [4,5]. There is a demand for methods that can be integrated directly into existing commercial ultrasound devices [6,7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spectra of Ultrasound Doppler Response Using Plane-Wave Compounding Technique

Barannik,

Hrytsenko

2024

East Eur. J. Phys.

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Within the framework of a simple model of the sensitivity function, the Doppler spectra are considered for different ways of generating response signals using plane wave compounding. A Doppler spectrum is obtained for coherent compounding of signals received at different steering angles of waves during their period of changing. Compared to traditional diagnostic systems, the Doppler spectrum width is increased only by limiting the duration of the signals. There is no additional increase in the spectrum width if the compound signals are formed by adding with cyclic permutation, in which signals from each new wave angle are compounded. When a Doppler signal is formed directly from Doppler signals at different steering angles, the spectral width increases both in comparison with the traditional method of sensing with stationary focused ultrasound fields and with the case of coherent signal compouding. The obtained increase in the spectral width has an intrinsic physical meaning. The increase in width is connected with a dynamic change in the Doppler angle, which increases the interval of apparent projections of the velocities of motion of inhomogeneities along the direction of transmitting of a plane wave without inclination.

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“…Although PWI and SAI have shown potential in raising the frame rate limit, their real-time realization is inherently not a trivial implementation task. One technical challenge that concerns many system developers is the massive computational demand of these fast imaging methods as compared to conventional ultrasound image formation [4]. Existing ultrasound scanners are usually equipped with field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) and digital signal processors (DSP) to handle computations related to image formation [1].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Real-time GPU-based software beamformer designed for advanced imaging methods research

Yiu¹,

Tsang²,

Yu³

2010

2010 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium

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High computational demand is known to be a technical hurdle for real-time implementation of advanced methods like synthetic aperture imaging (SAI) and plane wave imaging (PWI) that work with the pre-beamform data of each array element. In this paper, we present the development of a software beamformer for SAI and PWI with real-time parallel processing capacity. Our beamformer design comprises a pipelined group of graphics processing units (GPU) that are hosted within the same computer workstation. During operation, each available GPU is assigned to perform demodulation and beamforming for one frame of prebeamform data acquired from one transmit firing (e.g. point firing for SAI). To facilitate parallel computation, the GPUs have been programmed to treat the calculation of depth pixels from the same image scanline as a block of processing threads that can be executed concurrently, and it would repeat this process for all scanlines to obtain the entire frame of image data -i.e. lowresolution image (LRI). To reduce processing latency due to repeated access of each GPU's global memory, we have made use of each thread block's fast-shared memory (to store an entire line of pre-beamform data during demodulation), created texture memory pointers, and utilized global memory caches (to stream repeatedly used data samples during beamforming). Based on this beamformer architecture, a prototype platform has been implemented for SAI and PWI, and its LRI processing throughput has been measured for test datasets with 40 MHz sampling rate, 32 receive channels, and imaging depths between 5-15 cm. When using two Fermi-class GPUs (GTX-470), our beamformer can compute LRIs of 512-by-255 pixels at over 3200 fps and 1300 fps respectively for imaging depths of 5 cm and 15 cm. This processing throughput is roughly 3.2 times higher than a Tesla-class GPU (GTX-275).

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Real-time synthetic aperture imaging: opportunities and challenges

Cited by 6 publications

References 22 publications

Volumetric real-time imaging using a CMUT ring array

Volumetric real-time imaging using a CMUT ring array

Spectra of Ultrasound Doppler Response Using Plane-Wave Compounding Technique

Real-time GPU-based software beamformer designed for advanced imaging methods research

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