Secure ultrasound system

A system comprising one or more ultrasonic devices and an external processing system, wherein the one or more ultrasonic devices comprise:

• at least one ultrasonic transducer that is operable to receive an ultrasonic signal and produce an electrical signal responsive to, and indicative of, the received ultrasonic signal;
• an on-board processing system for processing the electrical signal to determine data therefrom;
• and
• a communications system for communicating the data with an external processing system,
• wherein the ultrasonic device is configured to protect the integrity of the ultrasonic data using a distributed ledger;
• and
• wherein the ultrasonic device(s) are configured to:
• group the data generated by the on-board processing system and/or the digitized version of the electrical signals produced by the ultrasonic transducers into blocks for transmission or storage, wherein each block comprises a number or predetermined amount of chronologically sequential data generated by the on-board processing system and/or a portion of the digitized version of the electrical waveform signals produced by the ultrasonic transducers;
• encrypt the data for storage and/or transmission;
• and
• store and transmit the encrypted data generated by the on-board processing system, including an encrypted digitized version of the electrical signals produced by the ultrasonic transducers, as part of a Blockchain, directed acyclic graph (DAG) or other distributed ledger, and communicate the encrypted ultrasonic data with the external processing system using the communications system of the respective ultrasonic device.

A method of determining and/or monitoring properties of an entity using at least one ultrasonic device, the one or more ultrasonic devices comprising:

• at least one ultrasonic transducer that is operable to receive an ultrasonic signal and produce an electrical signal responsive to, and indicative of, the received ultrasonic signal;
• an on-board processing system for processing the electrical signal to determine data therefrom, wherein the on-board processing system comprises a digitizer or is otherwise configured to digitize the electrical waveform signal indicative of the received ultrasonic waveform signal from the at least one ultrasonic transducer or values thereof, such that the data generated by the on-board processing system comprises the digitized version of the electrical waveform signals produced by the ultrasonic transducers;
• and
• a communications system for communicating the data with an external processing system, wherein the on-board processing system is configured to:
• group the data generated by the on-board processing system and/or the digitized version of the electrical signals produced by the ultrasonic transducers into blocks for transmission or storage, wherein each block comprises a number or predetermined amount of chronologically sequential data generated by the on-board processing system and/or a portion of the digitized version of the electrical waveform signals produced by the ultrasonic transducers;
• encrypt the data for storage and/or transmission;
• and
• store and/or transmit the encrypted data generated by the on-board processing system that comprises the digitized version of the electrical waveform signals produced by the ultrasonic transducers as part of a Blockchain, directed acyclic graph (DAG) or other distributed ledger;
• the method comprising:
• emitting an ultrasonic signal from the ultrasonic device into or onto the entity;
• receiving an ultrasonic signal using the ultrasonic device, wherein the received signal comprises or is derived from the signal emitted into or onto the entity;
• determining ultrasonic data from the received signal;
• and
• protecting the integrity of the ultrasonic data using a distributed ledger.