Patent ID: 7693685

Claim:
An ultrasonic front-end device for use in an ultrasonic system, compatible with P types of reception channels, where P is an integer larger than or equal to 1; the ultrasonic front-end device being connected between a probe and a detector of the ultrasonic system and controlled by a primary controller of the ultrasonic system; the probe having M array elements, where M is an integer larger than or equal to 1, the ultrasonic front-end device having an ultrasonic transmission part and an ultrasonic reception part, wherein the ultrasonic transmission part comprises a transmission beamformer and M transmission driving units, and has M transmission channels; the ultrasonic reception part comprises M high-voltage isolation circuits, RC amplifiers, RC analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and a beamformer electrically connected in said order and has RC reception channels, where RC=[N,2N,3N . . . p*N], N being an integer larger than or equal to 1, being characterized in that, M low-voltage analog switches and a network of resistors are serially connected between the M high-voltage isolation circuits and the RC amplifiers, wherein M low-voltage analog switches are configured to electrically connect RC array elements of the M array elements in the probe and the RC respective reception channels in the ultrasonic reception part as the scan lines of the ultrasonic diagnostic system change, and the network of resistors configured to connect the RC reception channels connected by the M low-voltage analog switches with the RC amplifiers, the network of resistors comprising M inputs IN[1, 2, 3, . . . , M] connected to the outputs of the low-voltage analog switches and RC outputs OUT[1, 2, . . . , RC] connected to the inputs of the RC amplifiers; the structure of the network of resistors can be expressed by the following formula: OUT[jj]=IN[jj+kk*RC], indicating that the output OUT[jj] and the input IN[jj+kk*RC] of the network of resistors are connected through resistors, where 1<=jj<=RC, 0<=kk<=INT(M/RC), INT denotes taking the integer part, if jj+kk*RC>M, a corresponding input does not exist, and there is no resistor connecting the corresponding input and the output of the network of resistors; and a digital reordering unit included in the reception beamformer comprises a plurality of 2:1 multiplexers and a plurality of D-type flip-flops (DFFs) coupled thereto correspondingly.