e-ISSN 2231-8534
ISSN 0128-7702
Soufiane Dangoury, Mouncef El marghichi, Mohamed Sadik and Abderrahim Fail
Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities, Volume 31, Issue 6, October 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.47836/pjst.31.6.24
Keywords: Focused beamforming, low-cost FPGA platform, plane waves, ultrasound
Published on: 12 October 2023
One of the most critical steps in forming an ultrasound image is beamforming, which determines the nature and shape of the sound waves produced. It allows for generating either sound waves focused on a specific depth in the area to be explored (focused beam) or plane waves. The control of the piezoelectric elements forming the probe causes the difference between these modes. In this paper, we focus on generating the commands for the beamforming transmission for both focused and plane wave techniques. The produced signals of the command were applied to the transducers to achieve the desired sound beam. Eventually, we design and implement the algorithm using a low-cost AlTera DE10-lite development board. The results show that despite not optimizing the hardware, the board was able to generate the necessary signals efficiently with less than 4% as logic elements requirement and used memory of 0% in the most complex and demanding scenario. Given the speed of access they present, we replace the use of memory with registers.
Agarwal, M., De, A., & Banerjee, S. (2016). Architecture of a real-time delay calculator for digital beamforming in ultrasound system. IET Circuits, Devices and Systems, 10(4), 322-329. https://doi.org/10.1049/iet-cds.2015.0189
Agarwal, M., Tomar, A., & Kumar, N. (2021). An IEEE single-precision arithmetic based beamformer architecture for phased array ultrasound imaging system. Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal, 24(5), 1080-1089. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jestch.2021.03.005
Almekkawy, M., Xu, J., & Chirala, M. (2014). An optimized ultrasound digital beamformer with dynamic focusing implemented on FPGA. In 2014 36th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (pp. 3296-3299). IEEE Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC.2014.6944327
Assef, A. A., Maia, J. M., Schneider, F. K., Costa, E. T., & Button, V. L. D. S. N. (2012). A programmable FPGA-based 8-channel arbitrary waveform generator for medical ultrasound research activities. In 2012 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (pp. 515-518). IEEE Publishing. https://doi.org/10.0/Linux-x86_64
Babu, P., & Parthasarathy, E. (2021). Reconfigurable FPGA Architectures: A Survey and Applications. In Journal of The Institution of Engineers (India): Series B (Vol. 102, Issue 1, pp. 143-156). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40031-020-00508-y
Boni, E., Yu, A. C. H., Freear, S., Jensen, J. A., & Tortoli, P. (2018). Ultrasound open platforms for next-generation imaging technique development. IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, 65(7), 1078-1092. https://doi.org/10.1109/TUFFC.2018.2844560
Couture, O., Fink, M., & Tanter, M. (2012). Ultrasound contrast plane wave imaging. IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, 59(12), 2676-2683. https://doi.org/10.1109/TUFFC.2012.2508
Dangoury, S., Sadik, M., Alali, A., & Abouzahir, S. (2020). Ultrasound Imaging: Beamforming Techniques. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Advanced Technologies for Humanity - Volume 1: ICATH (pp. 103-109). SciTePress. https://doi.org/DOI:10.5220/0010428901030109
Demi, L. (2018). Practical guide to ultrasound beam forming: Beam pattern and image reconstruction analysis. In Applied Sciences (Switzerland) (Vol. 8, Issue 9). MDPI AG. https://doi.org/10.3390/app8091544
Hoskins, P. R., Martin, K., & Thrush, A. (Eds.). (2010). Diagnostic Ultrasound: Physics and Equipment (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Kidav, J., Pillai, P. M., Deepak, V., & Sreejeesh S., G. (2022). Design of a 128-channel transceiver hardware for medical ultrasound imaging systems. IET Circuits, Devices and Systems, 16(1), 92-104. https://doi.org/10.1049/cds2.12087
Liebgott, H., Rodriguez-Molares, A., Cervenansky, F., Jensen, J. A., & Bernard, O. (2016). Plane-wave imaging challenge in medical ultrasound. In 2016 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS) (pp. 1-4). IEEE Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1109/ULTSYM.2016.7728908
Maeda, K., Kurjak, A. K., & Chervenak, F. (2012). The safe use of diagnostic ultrasound in obstetrics and gynecology. Donald School Journal of Ultrasound in Obstetrics & Gynecology, 6, 313-317.
Montaldo, G., Tanter, M., Bercoff, J., Benech, N., & Fink, M. (2009). Coherent plane-wave compounding for very high frame rate ultrasonography and transient elastography. IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, 56(3), 489-506. https://doi.org/10.1109/TUFFC.2009.1067
Powles, A. E., Martin, D. J., Wells, I. T., & Goodwin, C. R. (2018). Physics of ultrasound. In Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine (Vol. 19, Issue 4, pp. 202-205). Elsevier Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mpaic.2018.01.005
Risser, C., Hewener, H., Fournelle, M., Fonfara, H., Barry‐hummel, S., Weber, S., Speicher, D., & Tretbar, S. (2021). Real‐time volumetric ultrasound research platform with 1024 parallel transmit and receive channels. Applied Sciences, 11(13), Article 5795. https://doi.org/10.3390/app11135795
Rodriguez-Molares, A., Torp, H., Denarie, B., & Lovstakken, L. (2015). The angular apodization in coherent plane-wave compounding. IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, 62(11), 2018-2023. https://doi.org/10.1109/TUFFC.2015.007183
Rossi, S., & Boni, E. (2021). Embedded GPU implementation for high-performance ultrasound imaging. Electronics, 10(8), Article 884. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics
Seng, K. P., Lee, P. J., & Ang, L. M. (2021). Embedded intelligence on FPGA: Survey, applications and challenges. Electronics, 10(8), Article 895. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics
Tan, M., Kang, E., An, J. S., Chang, Z. Y., Vince, P., Mateo, T., Senegond, N., & Pertijs, M. A. P. (2020). A 64-Channel transmit beamformer with ± 30-V bipolar high-voltage pulsers for catheter-based ultrasound probes. IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, 55(7), 1796-1806. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSSC.2020.2987719
Tang, J., Zou, B., Li, C., Feng, S., & Peng, H. (2021). Plane-wave image reconstruction via generative adversarial network and attention mechanism. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, 70, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIM.2021.3087819
Tanter, M., & Fink, M. (2014). Ultrafast imaging in biomedical ultrasound. IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, 61(1), 102-119. https://doi.org/10.1109/TUFFC.2014.2882
ISSN 0128-7702
e-ISSN 2231-8534
Related Articles