Ultrasonic signal processor for a hand held ultrasonic diagnostic instrument
AssigneeSonoSite, Inc.
InventorsJuin- Jet Hwang, Geoffrey H. Jones, Terrance R. Doherty, Lauren S. Pflugrath
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Abstract
A hand held ultrasonic instrument is provided in a portable unit which performs both B mode and Doppler imaging. The instrument includes a transducer array mounted in a hand-held enclosure, with an integrated circuit transceiver connected to the elements of the array for the reception of echo signals. A digital signal processing circuit performs both B mode and Doppler signal processing such as filtering, detection and Doppler estimation, as well as advanced functions such as assembly of multiple zone focused scanlines, synthetic aperture formation, depth dependent filtering, speckle reduction, flash suppression, and frame averaging.
Claims22
A method for reducing signal bandwidth in a digital signal processor of a handheld ultrasound device, said method comprising:
- receiving scanline signals in a normalization circuit, wherein said receiving scanline signals is at an input rate;
- coupling scanline signals to a first finite impulse response filter, wherein said scanline signals are multiplied by a coefficient and produce a first accumulated signal;
- and
- coupling said scanline signals to a second finite response filter, wherein said scanline signals are multiplied by a coefficient and produce a second accumulated signal,
- wherein said first and second finite impulse response filters provide said first and second accumulated signals at a rate less than the input rate.
A digital signal processor for use in a handheld ultrasound device comprising:
- a normalization circuit configured for receiving and adjusting scanline signals for beam and aperture variation;
- at least two finite impulse response filters configured for receiving and multiplying scanline signals;
- a r.f. memory configured for storing partially summed scanlines from a portion of a full aperture acquired following at least two separate pulse transmissions;
- and
- an adder configured for combining said partially summed scanlines to form full aperture scanlines.
A digital signal processor for use in a handheld ultrasound device comprising:
- means for normalizing scanline signals for beam and aperture variation;
- means for multiplying said normalized scanline signals;
- and
- means for forming a synthetic aperture, wherein said means for forming a synthetic aperture uses multiplied normalized scanline signals from said means for multiplying acquired following at least two separate pulse transmissions for combining to form full aperture scanlines.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.