A low voltage portable system using modified Golay sequences

For outstanding portability, recently proposed handheld, portable ultrasound systems, which provide excellent image quality as well as portability and patient accessibility, employ the battery-powered devices. However, they suffer from low signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) due to limited transmit power. In this paper, we propose a low voltage portable system using modified Golay sequences which can increase SNR. To verify the proposed system, we modified a commercial ultrasound scanner to derive coded waveforms and to acquire rf-data. We performed. experiments using Modified Golay sequences and conventional pulse-echo signals and images from mimicking phantom were acquired. For Modified Golay sequences with length 8 (2.1 μsec), experimental results showed that actual SNR gain was about 10.03 dB compared to conventional pulse-echo system with the same voltage (V_PP=10 V). Compared to a conventional one with high voltage transmit (V_PP=80 V), the proposed system using the Modified Golay sequences with length 32 (8.3 μsec) provided a comparable SNR and penetration depth with low peak voltage (V_PP=10 V)