A high throughout, extensible and flexible ultrasonic excitation and acquisition system for ultrasound imaging

Ultrasound computed tomography his paper designs and implements a high throughout, extensible and flexible ultrasound excitation and data acquisition system that transmits sustained high-speed ultrasound data to the server by Ethernet technology. The system is mainly used for the second-generation ultrasound computed tomography system designed in the medical ultrasound lab, but can also be utilized by other types of ultrasound imaging systems. The system consists of one or more ultrasonic excitation and acquisition boards. Each board includes multiplexing switches, pulse generators with T/R switches, analog front ends, analog-to-digital converters, and an FPGA, and can be used to excite a 256-element probe to transmit and receive ultrasound signals. The peak and the average bandwidth of one single board are 44.8Gbps and 4Gbps, respectively. Potential users can combine several excitation and acquisition boards to build high-end ultrasound imaging systems. The system has been applied to upgrade our ultrasound computed tomography system.