Aperture-domain processing and its applications in ultrasound imaging: a review

Software-based high-level synthesis design of FPGA beamformers for synthetic aperture imaging

Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) can potentially be configured as beamforming platforms for ultrasound imaging, but a long design time and skilled expertise in hardware programming are typically required. In this article, we present a novel approach to the efficient design of FPGA beamformers for synthetic aperture (SA) imaging via the use of software-based high-level synthesis techniques. Software kernels (coded in OpenCL) were first developed to stage-wise handle SA beamforming operations, and their corresponding FPGA logic circuitry was emulated through a high-level synthesis framework. After design space analysis, the fine-tuned OpenCL kernels were compiled into register transfer level descriptions to configure an FPGA as a beamformer module. The processing performance of this beamformer was assessed through a series of offline emulation experiments that sought to derive beamformed images from SA channel-domain raw data (40-MHz sampling rate, 12 bit resolution). With 128 channels, our FPGA-based SA beamformer can achieve 41 frames per second (fps) processing throughput (3.44 × 10(8) pixels per second for frame size of 256 × 256 pixels) at 31.5 W power consumption (1.30 fps/W power efficiency). It utilized 86.9% of the FPGA fabric and operated at a 196.5 MHz clock frequency (after optimization). Based on these findings, we anticipate that FPGA and high-level synthesis can together foster rapid prototyping of real-time ultrasound processor modules at low power consumption budgets.

GPU-based minimum variance beamformer for synthetic aperture imaging of the eye

Minimum variance (MV) beamforming has emerged as an adaptive apodization approach to bolster the quality of images generated from synthetic aperture ultrasound imaging methods that are based on unfocused transmission principles. In this article, we describe a new high-speed, pixel-based MV beamforming framework for synthetic aperture imaging to form entire frames of adaptively apodized images at real-time throughputs and document its performance in swine eye imaging case examples. Our framework is based on parallel computing principles, and its real-time operational feasibility was realized on a six-GPU (graphics processing unit) platform with 3,072 computing cores. This framework was used to form images with synthetic aperture imaging data acquired from swine eyes (based on virtual point-source emissions). Results indicate that MV-apodized image formation with video-range processing throughput (>20 fps) can be realized for practical aperture sizes (128 channels) and frames with λ/2 pixel spacing. Also, in a corneal wound detection experiment, MV-apodized images generated using our framework revealed apparent contrast enhancement of the wound site (10.8 dB with respect to synthetic aperture images formed with fixed apodization). These findings indicate that GPU-based MV beamforming can, in real time, potentially enhance image quality when performing synthetic aperture imaging that uses unfocused firings.