Patent ID: 6932767

Claim:
A component for use with a diagnostic medical ultrasound system comprising: an input source operative to provide a sequence of digital signals, each of said sequence of digital signals having been derived from at least one ultrasonic echo received by an ultrasound transducer from a subject in response to transmission of acoustic energy into said subject by said transducer; at least one processor coupled with said input source and comprising an incremental data processing architecture for executing a first application program, said first application program operative to incrementally receive and process each of at least a subset of said sequence of digital signals in succession, said first application program comprising a plurality of processing stages, each of said plurality of processing stages sequentially coupled with another of said plurality of processing stages, each of said plurality of processing stages comprising an input, an output and a function, said input of one of said plurality of processing stages being coupled with at least one of said input source and said output of another of said plurality of processing stages, each of said plurality of processing stages operative to receive data via said input, perform said function and generate a result on said output, wherein said one of said plurality of processing stages coupled with said input source receives each of said subset of said sequence of digital signals in succession; and wherein said output sink is further operative to receive said result from said output of at least one of said plurality of processing stages; and an output sink coupled with said at least one processor and operative to receive said processed digital signals from said first application program.