Patent ID: 6494842
Filing Date: 2002-12-17
Classification: G01S,G10K

Abstract:
An ultrasound receive beamforming apparatus for processing signals received from an array of transducers, comprising:a plurality of beamforming devices, each device applying delays to data samples of M channels provided from M transducers for forming N receive beams and adding delayed data samples of M channels to provide N intermediate outputs, N and M being positive integers less than the number of transducers in the array; means for summing the intermediate outputs from said plurality of beamforming devices, to provide data representing the N receive beams, wherein each of said beamforming devices includes: a predetermined number of per-channel delay elements which provide first delays to the data samples of M channels, to provide delayed data per each channel and per each receive beam, first adders for adding the delayed data of not less than 2 channels provided from the per-channel delay elements, and multi-channel delay elements which provide second delays to the outputs of the first adders.