ULTRASONIC IMAGING COMPRESSION METHODS AND APPARATUS
To implement a single-chip ultrasonic imaging solution, on-chip signal processing may be employed in the receive signal path to reduce data bandwidth and an output data module may be used to move data for all received channels off-chip as a digital data stream. The digitization of received signals on-chip allows advanced digital signal processing to be performed on-chip, and thus permits the full integration of an entire ultrasonic imaging system on a single semiconductor substrate. The on-chip digitization of received signals also enables the on-chip integration of ultrasound processing and/or pre-processing to reduce the burden on off-chip computing. Data compression architectures are disclosed to facilitate the transfer of data off-chip as a digital data stream in accordance with the bandwidth requirements of standard commercially-available output interfaces.
1 - 20 . (canceled)
21 . An ultrasound system, comprising:
a single-substrate ultrasound device comprising:
at least one ultrasonic transducer element fabricated on a semiconductor substrate;
a receive compression circuit fabricated on the semiconductor substrate and arranged to receive an analog output signal from the at least one ultrasonic transducer element;
an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) fabricated on the semiconductor substrate and configured to digitize the analog output signal and generate a digitized signal; and
a data compression circuit fabricated on the semiconductor substrate and arranged to operate on the digitized signal prior to an image reconstruction process, wherein the data compression circuit is configured to generate compressed pre-image reconstruction data by reducing a data bandwidth of the digitized signal while maintaining independent digitized channel data; and
an output interface configured to transmit the compressed pre-image reconstruction data from the single-substrate ultrasound device to a computing platform external to the semiconductor substrate, wherein the computing platform is configured to perform at least a portion of the image reconstruction process based on the compressed pre-image reconstruction data.
22 . The ultrasound system of claim 21 , wherein the data compression circuit comprises a digital compression circuit fabricated on the semiconductor substrate and arranged to operate on the digitized signal prior to the image reconstruction process.
23 . The ultrasound system of claim 22 , wherein the digital compression circuit is configured to perform at least one of quadrature demodulation, downsampling, filtered downsampling, cascade integrating comb (CIC) filtering, re-quantization, or pulse compression.
24 . The ultrasound system of claim 22 , wherein the digital compression circuit comprises a filter, a decimation circuit, a re-quantization circuit, and an arithmetic logic unit (ALU), wherein an output of the filter is coupled to an input of the decimation circuit, an output of the decimation circuit is coupled to an input of the re-quantization circuit, and an output of the re-quantization circuit is coupled to an input of the ALU.
25 . The ultrasound system of claim 24 , wherein the filter comprises a cascade integrating comb (CIC) filter configured to reduce a data rate of the digitized signal prior to the image reconstruction process.
26 . The ultrasound system of claim 24 , wherein the arithmetic logic unit is configured to perform one or more operations including at least one of extending a word size, bit shifting, accumulating, or subtracting.
27 . The ultrasound system of claim 21 , wherein the data compression circuit is configured to generate the compressed pre-image reconstruction data based, at least in part, on a mode of operation of the ultrasound system.
28 . The ultrasound system of claim 21 , wherein the at least one ultrasonic transducer element comprises a plurality of ultrasonic transducer elements fabricated on the semiconductor substrate as an ultrasonic transducer array.
29 . The ultrasound system of claim 28 , wherein the ultrasonic transducer array comprises at least 5,000 ultrasonic transducer elements fabricated on the semiconductor substrate.
30 . The ultrasound system of claim 21 , wherein the output interface comprises a high-speed serial interface including at least one of a USB 3.0 interface, a USB 3.1 interface, a USB 2.0 interface, a Thunderbolt interface, a FireWire interface, and a Gigabit Ethernet interface.
31 . A method of operating an ultrasound system, comprising:
generating an analog output signal responsive to ultrasonic energy with at least one ultrasonic transducer element fabricated on a semiconductor substrate;
receiving the analog output signal with a receive compression circuit fabricated on the semiconductor substrate;
digitizing the analog output signal to generate a digitized signal with an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) fabricated on the semiconductor substrate;
operating on the digitized signal prior to an image reconstruction process with a data compression circuit fabricated on the semiconductor substrate to generate compressed pre-image reconstruction data by reducing a data bandwidth of the digitized signal while maintaining independent digitized channel data; and
transmitting the compressed pre-image reconstruction data from the semiconductor substrate to a computing platform external to the semiconductor substrate, and performing at least a portion of the image reconstruction process at the computing platform based on the compressed pre-image reconstruction data.
32 . The method of claim 31 , further comprising:
digitally compressing the digitized signal prior to the image reconstruction process using a digital compression circuit fabricated on the semiconductor substrate.
33 . The method of claim 32 , further comprising:
performing at least one of quadrature demodulation, downsampling, filtered downsampling, cascade integrating comb (CIC) filtering, re-quantization, or pulse compression on the digitized signal.
34 . The method of claim 32 , further comprising:
filtering the digitized signal;
decimating the filtered signal;
re-quantizing the decimated signal; and
processing the re-quantized signal using an arithmetic logic unit (ALU).
35 . The method of claim 34 , further comprising:
filtering the digitized signal using a cascade integrating comb (CIC) filter to reduce a data rate of the digitized signal prior to the image reconstruction process.
36 . The method of claim 34 , further comprising:
processing the re-quantized signal by performing one or more operations including at least one of extending a word size, bit shifting, accumulating, or subtracting.
37 . The method of claim 31 , further comprising:
generating the compressed pre-image reconstruction data based, at least in part, on a mode of operation of the ultrasound system.
38 . The method of claim 31 , further comprising:
generating the analog output signal using a plurality of ultrasonic transducer elements fabricated on the semiconductor substrate as an ultrasonic transducer array.
39 . The method of claim 38 , wherein the ultrasonic transducer array comprises at least 5,000 ultrasonic transducer elements fabricated on the semiconductor substrate.
40 . The method of claim 31 , wherein transmitting the compressed pre-image reconstruction data further comprises transmitting the compressed pre-image reconstruction data via a high-speed serial interface including at least one of a USB 3.0 interface, a USB 3.1 interface, a USB 2.0 interface, a Thunderbolt interface, a FireWire interface, or a Gigabit Ethernet interface.