Ultrasound beamformer with high speed serial control bus packetized protocol
AssigneeGeneral Electric Company
InventorSnehal Chandrakant Shah
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method for conveying control information in an ultrasound system is provided. The method provides unique identifiers for the processing components in a beamformer of an ultrasound system. The method formats control information into at least one packet based on a packetized protocol, the control information relating to beamforming operations carried out by the processing components. The method conveys the control information to the processing components.
Claims10
A method for conveying control information in an ultrasound system having a beamformer and separate circuit boards each having processing components, said method comprising:
- providing a dynamic addressing of the processing components by transmitting a command packet with an initial value to the processing components, the initial value being used to create a unique identifier for the processing component that receives the command packet, the initial value being modified by at least one of the processing components prior to transmitting the command packet to another one of the processing components;
- formatting control information into at least one packet based on a packetized protocol, said control information directing at least one of the processing components to perform a beamforming operation, the control information including a component identification of the at least one of the processing components;
- and
- conveying the control information to the at least one of the processing components based on a comparison of the component identification in the control information and the unique identifiers of the processing components, the control information conveyed by serially communicating the control information among the circuit boards.
A beamformer for an ultrasound system, said beamformer comprising:
- transmit beamformer circuit boards each including a deserializer and a serializer;
- receive beamformer circuit boards each including a deserializer and a serializer;
- and
- a control processor formatting control information to direct beamforming operations performed by one or more of the transmit beamformer circuit boards and the receive beamformer circuit boards, the deserializers in the transmit beamformer circuit boards and the receive beamformer circuit boards receiving the control information as a serial input and communicating the control information to the corresponding serializers in the transmit beamformer circuit boards and in the receive beamformer circuit boards as a parallel output.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.