Patent ID: 7527591

Claim:
A sub-aperture beamforming probe including an array of transducer elements, the probe comprising: a handheld ultrasound probe housing; a first processing board comprising a first signal processor located in the probe housing; a plurality of transducer elements held in the probe housing and coupled to receive signal connections of the first signal processor to define a receive sub-aperture, the receive signal connections coupling receive signals arising from the transducer elements to the first signal processor; and a cache memory in the probe housing and coupled to the first signal processor, the cache memory comprising directional parameters associated with receive beams for the receive sub-aperture; where the first signal processor retrieves directional parameters associated with one of the receive beams, determines a beamforming delay derived from the directional parameters for each transducer element in the receive sub-aperture, and applies the respective beamforming delay to each receive signal.