Portable ultrasound imaging system

Abstract

A portable ultrasound imaging system includes a scan head coupled by a cable to a portable battery-powered data processor and display unit. The scan head enclosure houses an array of ultrasonic transducers and the circuitry associated therewith, including pulse synchronizer circuitry used in the transmit mode for transmission of ultrasonic pulses and beam forming circuitry used in the receive mode to dynamically focus reflected ultrasonic signals returning from the region of interest being imaged.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 12 / 008,098 filed Jan. 8, 2008, U.S. application Ser. No. 08 / 496,804 filed Jun. 29, 1995, U.S. application Ser. No. 08 / 599,816 filed Feb. 12, 1996, PCT Application No. US1996 / 11166 filed Jun. 28, 1996, U.S. application Ser. No. 09 / 123,991 filed Jul. 28, 1998, U.S. application Ser. No. 08 / 981,427 filed Oct. 9, 1998, U.S. application Ser. No. 08 / 971,938 filed Nov. 17, 1997 and U.S. application Ser. No. 09 / 619,123 filed Jul. 19, 2000. The entire content of the above applications are being incorporated herein by reference.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]Typical conventional ultrasound systems can have transducer arrays which consist of 128 ultrasonic transducers. Each of the transducers is associated with its own processing circuitry located in the console processing unit. The processing circuitry typically includes driver circuits which, in the transmit mode, send precisely time...

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Benefits of technology

[0049]In another preferred embodiment, the data processing and display unit can be a single small battery-operated unit. It can be hand-held or worn clipped to the user or in the user's pocket. This, in conjunction with the hand-held scan head of the invention, makes the ultrasound system of the invention completely portable.

[0050]The ultrasound imaging system of the invention has several advantages over prior conventional systems. Because much of the signal processing circuitry is integrated on small chips, the signal processing can be carried out in the scan head. Because of the proximity of the transducers to the processing circuitry, signal loss is substantially reduced. This results in greatly improved system performance in the form of high-resolution high-quality images. Also, since the signal summing is also performed in the scan head, only a single or very few cable conductor lines are required to transmit image signals to t

Problems solved by technology

There are two problems associated with these conventional techniques.

First, a simple variable-speed clock generator has not been developed to date.

Secondly, for an N-stage tapped delay line, the area associated with the tap select circuit is proportional to N2, thus such a circuit would require a large amount of microchip area to realize an integrated tap architecture.

Due to the difficulty and complexity associated with the generation of the control circuits of the conventional approach, only a few time-delay structures could be integrated on one microchip, and therefore a large number of chips would be needed to perform a multi-element dynamic beam forming function.

For these reasons, none of the prior art ultrasound imaging systems utilize the straightforward time-delay implementation.

Unfortunately, the mixer approximation method suffers from image

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