Reconfigurable architecture for ultrasonic signal compression and target detection

We present a reconfigurable ultrasonic processor which can simultaneously employ two different ultrasonic imaging applications: ultrasonic target detection and signal compression. The underlying hardware design makes use of the fact that both applications share the same algorithm fundamentals. A unified architecture implements signal decomposition and reconstruction with forward and inverse DCT and DWT. After the forward transform step, a thresholding operation is applied to discriminate either frequency bands for target detection or coefficient amplitudes for data compression. The flexibility and the modular design make this reconfigurable architecture an effective and practical solution for real-time ultrasonic imaging applications.