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Ultrasound probe distributed beamformer

  • US 7,527,591 B2
  • Filed: 11/21/2003
  • Issued: 05/05/2009
  • Est. Priority Date: 11/21/2003
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A sub-aperture beamforming probe including an array of transducer elements, the probe comprising:

  • a handheld ultrasound probe housing;

    a first processing board comprising a first signal processor located in the probe housing;

    a plurality of transducer elements held in the probe housing and coupled to receive signal connections of the first signal processor to define a receive sub-aperture, the receive signal connections coupling receive signals arising from the transducer elements to the first signal processor; and

    a cache memory in the probe housing and coupled to the first signal processor, the cache memory comprising directional parameters associated with receive beams for the receive sub-aperture;

    where the first signal processor retrieves directional parameters associated with one of the receive beams, determines a beamforming delay derived from the directional parameters for each transducer element in the receive sub-aperture, and applies the respective beamforming delay to each receive signal.

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