An Embedded High Performance Ultrasonic Signal Processing Subsystem

We have developed an embedded ultrasound signal processing (EUSP) subsystem which has the capability to process ultrasound signals of B mode, color flow and spectrum Doppler in real-time. The system consists of four high performance digital signal processors (DSPs), TMS320VC6416, and other peripherals such as FIFOs and SDRAMs. It can provide very high data throughputs and up to 19200 MIPS of computation capability. By using the DSP/BIOS, a real-time operating kernel provided by TI, and DSP software implementation from our specific ultrasound signal and image processing algorithms we can achieve up to 34 frames per second in B/Color mode, with the B mode input image being 257 by 512 (before the scan conversion) and color flow input signal being 59 by 512 by 16. Real-time in vivo images in different image modes have been obtained by integrating the EUSP into a digital ultrasound scanner designed and made in our laboratory.