Patent ID: 8317706

Claim:
In an ultrasound imaging system including a receive beamformer applied to a plurality of sequences of ultrasound signal samples received during a sampling window to form one or more beams, wherein each beam is represented by an array of beamformed samples, wherein analog to digital conversion of a plurality of analog ultrasound signals output by a plurality of ultrasound transducer elements during the sampling window produce the plurality of sequences of ultrasound signal samples, a method comprising: compressing the beams produced by applying the receive beamformer to the ultrasound signal samples received during the sampling window to form compressed beams, including compressing the beamformed samples in the array representing a particular beam to form compressed beamformed samples for a corresponding compressed beam, wherein the compressing of a particular beamformed sample in the array depends in part on a characteristic of at least one other beamformed sample in the array, wherein each beam is compressed independently of another beam corresponding to the sampling window, wherein the corresponding compressed beam includes fewer bits than the particular beam; and transferring the compressed beams across a digital interface to a signal processor.