Patent ID: 8920325
Filing Date: 2014-12-30
Classification: A61B

Abstract:
1. A hand-holdable ultrasound system comprising: a detachable transducer assembly comprising a plurality of transducer elements, the detachable transducer assembly interchangeable with one or more other detachable transducer assemblies, the detachable transducer assembly and the one or more other detachable transducer assemblies are suitable for ultrasound imaging in a respective one of a plurality of different operational modes of the ultrasound system, the detachable transducer assembly not attached to or part of a transducer probe, and the detachable transducer assembly attaches directly to the hand-holdable ultrasound system and not through a transducer probe; a driving circuit operable to deliver driving signals to excite the transducer elements of the transducer assembly to emit ultrasound signals, the driving circuit comprising a plurality of transmit pulsers; a receive circuit operable to receive reflected ultrasound signals detected at the transducer assembly and to condition the received reflected ultrasound signals to yield conditioned signals, the receive circuit comprising one or more analog to digital converters arranged to digitize the received reflected ultrasound signals; a configurable signal processing unit connected to receive the digitized conditioned signals and to process the conditioned signals, the configurable signal processing unit comprising a display operable to display an image based at least in part on the reflected ultrasound signals detected at the transducer assembly; and one or more user interface controls for providing user input to the hand-holdable ultrasound system; wherein the software instructions are configured to cause the one or more data processors to: identify a type of the detachable transducer assembly; based on the identified type of the detachable transducer assembly, select a respective one of the plurality of operational modes corresponding to the identified type of the detachable transducer assembly for which the ultrasound system will be configured; and configure each of: the signal processing unit, the transmit circuit, the processor and the user interface controls according to the one of the sets of configuration data corresponding to the selected operational mode; wherein: the sets of configuration data for different ones of the plurality of operational modes are configured to configure the signal processing unit to implement digital filters having different filter coefficients to provide filtering of the conditioned reflected ultrasound signals received from the transducer assembly; the set of configuration data for at least one of the operational modes is configured to configure the field programmable gate array to both generate control signals for the transmit circuit and to provide processing of detected signals received from elements of the transducer assembly; the set of configuration data for at least one of the operational modes is configured to identify software to be run on the processor unit to support imaging in the corresponding operational mode, the software configured to cause the processor unit to perform one or more of: filtering, envelope detection, log compression, and auto-correlation; the set of configuration data for at least one of the operational modes is configured to configure the signal processor unit to pass RF data to the processor unit at a rate that is two or more times a frequency of the ultrasound signals and to configure the processor unit to perform further processing to derive image data from the RF data by one or more of: fast Fourier transform of the RF data and auto-correlation; or the set of configuration data for at least one of the operational modes is configured to configure the signal processor unit to provide a transmit beamformer and a receive beamformer, the transmit beamformer and receive beamformer having different numbers of channels; the plurality of operational modes comprises a line placement operational mode, one of the sets of configuration data comprises line placement configuration data, and the ultrasound system is configured according to the line placement configuration data to provide imaging that is optimized for guiding a needle into a tissue or another physiological structure, the line placement configuration data specifying line placement software to be executed by the processor unit and configured to configure the signal processing unit with beamforming coefficients, one or both of the line placement configuration data and the line placement software comprising parameters for generating guidelines on the display to indicate a desired placement of athe needle.