Real-Time Digital Image Reconstruction: A Description of Imaging Hardware and an Analysis of Quantization Errors

A~~,stroct-General-purpose computers have been used to reconstruct images for more than two decades. Although computer-based reconstruction is versatile, it is notoriously slow. A real-time digital acoustic imaging system (called DAISY) is described, which is capable of reconstructing more than thirty new image frames per second. Both the imaging hardware and its operation are discussed. The latter portion of this paper is concerned with the effects of quantization errors in digital imaging systems. The discrete nature of both the data (digitized signal data) and the aperture (array apertures) are considered. The discussion is couched in general terms and is not specialized to acoustic imaging alone.