An Ultrasound Beamformer Using Oversampling

t t Abstract - Oversampled analog to digital converters (delta-sigma NDs) have been proposed to radically reduce the size, cost and power consumption of digital ultrasound beamformers. Simply replacing conventional A/Ds with single bit oversampled versions, however, produces significant image artifacts for a dynamic focus system. In addition, spectral Doppler measurements are severely compromised. Here, we disclose a complete beamformer exploiting oversampling principles on both transmit and receive that doesn't suffer from these problems. The architecture preserves the simplicity of an oversampled design, yet produces as sensitive spectral Doppler measurements. In this high quality B-Scan and color flow images, as well