A real-time beamformer for high frame rate ultrasound imaging

High frame rate (HFR) imaging methods based on the transmission of defocused or plane-waves rather than focused beams are increasingly popular. In this work, we present the FPGA-based implementation of a massively parallel beamformer, available on the 256-channel ULtrasound Advanced Open Platform (ULA-OP 256), capable of producing compounded HFR B-Mode images in real-time. The implemented beamformer sustains an average output sample rate of 400 MSPS. This corresponds, for example, to raw radiofrequency images, each of 64 lines by 2048 depths, continuously produced in real-time at a maximum frame rate of 3 kHz. The related beamformed and demodulated data are available for acquisition and/or further real-time processing.

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