Home ultrasound system

An apparatus for generating multiple scan lines while performing ultrasound examination of a patient, the apparatus comprising:

• a scan head to transmit an ultrasound signal and to receive a reflected ultrasound signal;
• a pre-beamformer time delay lookup table (LUT) having stored therein K sets of different time delays;
• and
• reconfigurable logic having K pre-beamformer processing units, each pre-beamformer processing unit to apply the K sets of different time delays to complex baseband signals produced from the reflected ultrasound signal to construct K scan lines.

An apparatus for generating multiple scan lines while performing ultrasound examination of a patient, the apparatus comprising:

• a scan head to transmit an ultrasound signal and to receive a reflected ultrasound signal;
• a lookup table (LUT) having stored therein a time delay;
• a memory having stored therein complex baseband signals produced from the reflected ultrasound signal;
• and
• reconfigurable logic having a pre-beamformer processing unit to apply the time delay to complex baseband signals multiple times to construct multiple scan lines, respectively.

An article of manufacture, comprising:

• a machine-accessible medium having data that, when accessed, results in a machine performing operations comprising:
• selecting a first power mode for an ultrasound machine;
• selecting an initial threshold value for a time for a battery in the home ultrasound machine;
• determining an amount of power consumption for the battery;
• based on the amount of power consumption, estimating an amount of energy remaining for the battery;
• based on the amount of power consumption and the amount of energy remaining, estimating a time remaining for the battery;
• if the amount of time remaining is greater than the initial threshold value, then maintaining operation of the ultrasound machine in the first power mode;
• and
• if the amount of time remaining is less than or equal to the initial threshold value, then selecting a second power mode for the ultrasound machine.

An apparatus for performing ultrasound examination of a patient, comprising:

• a scan head to receive a reflected ultrasound signal from the patient, wherein the scan head includes an identification memory having stored therein information associated with a type for the scan head;
• a configuration memory having stored therein information associated with a type for a scan head for a predetermined ultrasound examination;
• and
• a controller to compare the information associated with the scan head type stored in the identification memory with the information associated with the scan head type stored in the configuration memory and to provide an error indication if the information associated with the scan head type stored in the identification memory does not match the information associated with the scan head type stored in the configuration memory.