Patent ID: 6497664
Filing Date: 2002-12-24
Classification: A61B,G01S,G10K

Abstract:
A medical diagnostic ultrasonic receive beamformer responsive to a plurality of receive signals, said beamformer comprising a signal processing path, said beamformer further comprising:at least one upsampler in the path, each upsampler operative to upsample a respective set of receive signals; at least one time delay device in the path downstream of the upsampler, each time delay device operative to apply focusing delays to a respective set of upsampled receive signals; at least one summer in the path downstream of the upsampler, each summer operative to sum at least two of the upsampled, delayed receive signals; and at least one smoothing filter in the path downstream of the time delay device, each filter operative to filter the summed, delayed, upsampled receive signals; wherein each of the at least one upsampler, time delay device, summer, and smoothing filter are implemented in a programmable gate array.