Peter Pazmany Catholic University Faculty of Information Technology www.itk.ppke.hu Medical diagnostic systems (Orvosbiológiai képalkotó rendszerek) B-mode imaging components ( B-mód képalkotás összetevői) Miklós Gyöngy 2011.11.28.. TÁMOP 4.1.2-08/2/A/KMR-2009-0006 1
The origins: pulse-echo ranging [Szabo 2004, pp. 1-12] Sonar: SOund NAvigation and Ranging Titanic disaster (1912) Anti-submarine warfare (1916-) Radar: RAdio Detection and Ranging Tesla (1917) Early experiments in medical ultrasound came from equipment and experience in above two fields Ranging (distance measurement based on time of arrival information) relies on relatively constant speed of sound 2 Hurricane Abby approaching the coast of British Honduras NOAA Photo Library, http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/htmls/wea01 219.htm
The origins: using an oscilloscope Echo returning from transmission observed on oscilloscope Amplitude-mode (A-mode): traditional oscilloscope display Brightness-mode (B-mode): display envelope of each A-line on top of each other received voltage transverse distance time longitudal distance Multiple reflections from a boundary. Left: A-line. Right: B-mode image 3
The role of technology [Szabo 2004, pp. 16-20] Advances in transducers piezoelectricity (Curie brothers, 1880) mass, reproducible manufacture miniaturization (e.g. MEMS) Advances in electronics application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) digital signal processors (DSP) very large scale integration (VLSI) move towards digitization (beamforming, TGC) reduced cost of digital storage
Pulse-echo pathway (A-line) DAC (if digital beamformer) Waveform generator Transmit Beamformer Amplifier (micro-coaxial cable) Transmit/ Receive Switch Multiplexer Transducer elements acoustic medium ADC (later if analogue beamformer) Time-Gain Compensation Receive Beamformer Envelope Detection Scan Conversion (compression, downsampling, projection) 5
User control/access Transmission Typical commercial system: choose imaging depth (determines focus) choose frequency (determines waveform) Research system: arbitrary transmission Reception Typical commercial system: access to bitmap screen grab access to post-beamformed RF data (maybe!) Research system: pre-beamformed channel RF panel of imaging parameters on the z.one ultrasound system (ZONARE Medical Systems) 6
Needs for user control/access Clinician: basic parameters (resolution, depth) Researcher of registration/segmentation ideally post-beamformed (BF) data Researcher of new imaging modalities: some research possible with BF data (e.g. estimation of acoustic parameters) ideally, total control over imaging parameters calibration of transmitted and received signal for quantitative studies panel of imaging parameters on a z.one ultrasound system (ZONARE Medical Systems) 7
Ultrasound systems for research use Commerical (C)/ Channel data (C)/ Name Purpose-built (P) Post-beamformed (P) Other options Antares (Siemens) C P DiPhAS (IBMT,Fraunhofer) LeCoeur (OPEN) C C arbitrary transmission RASMUS (DTU) P C arbitrary transmission SonixTouch (Ultrasonix) C C imaging parameters SONOS 500 URP (Agilent + U. Virginia) C/P C SITAU FP (Dasel) C C programmable width transmission t3000 (Terason) C P arbitrary apodization, focal depth ULA-OP (U. Florence) P C arbitrary transmission z.one ZONARE C C (on request) arbitrary transmission [Tortoli et al. 2009; Wilson et al. 2006] 8
Transmit/Receive switch Implementations: diode transmission line (frequency selective) Transmission: ~10 V; Reception: ~mv Some leakage will always occur Receive circuitry needs to be resistant to saturation blinding (especially from matching layer)
Multiplexing Reduction of complexity Maintain fixed subaperture during linear scan element i channel i MUX element i+64 i+128 (if 192 elements) Shifting of subaperture during linear scan: (1,2,...64), (65,2,...,64), (65,66,3,...,64), etc.
Time-gain compensation (TGC) [Brunner 2002] Diffraction loss relatively unimportant. Consider, in the worst case, spherically diverging Tx/Rx beams. Identical scatterer at 5 cm, 10 cm, causes -12 db signal difference. Tissue attenuation ~1dB/MHz/cm. 5 MHz signal, 10 cm penetration depth, causes -100 db loss. Linear-in-decibel variable-gain amplifiers (VGA) needed to for time-gain compensation (TGC) 11
Frequency-shift compensation [Szabo 2004, pp. 86-88] Tissue causes frequency-dependent attenuation Frequency peak of a Gaussian-modulated pulse shifts with distance (~1 MHz for 5 cm imaging depth, 50% fractional bandwidth) Depth-dependent compensation needed (but where in the signal processing pathway is it most appropriate?)
Focal Point Array Variable delays Analogue Adder Output signal ADC Analogue beamforming Focal Point Array ADC ADC ADC ADC ADC ADC Variable delays FIFO FIFO FIFO FIFO FIFO FIFO Digital Adder Output signal Digital beamforming ADC FIFO Sampling clock adapted from [Brunner2002] 13
Analogue beamforming Difficult to match channels across delay lines Many delay taps needed or phase shifting + Only one ADC needed can make it high-spec Digital beamforming High cost of in-sync, fast (vs) high-resolution ADCs Large bit depth and sampling rate incur large storage and computational costs + Easier to program/configure + Novel implementations (e.g. several receive beams) [Brunner 2002] 14
ADC considerations Fast MHz applications, flash ADC is used (comparator for every signal level) Oversampling: sample at a higher rate, take average of values. E.g. 10 bits at 100 MHz can generate 12-bit data at 25 MHz Sigma-delta processing: pulse density modulation local density of 1s represents value (used both for ADC and DAC) IQ (in-phase/quadrature) modulation/demodulation
IQ demodulation 1. Mix bandwidth of interest down to baseband 2. Apply LFP 3. Sample at reduced sample rate (less storage cost) -f c Down-mixing Bandwidth of interest B f c (mixing frequency) f s /2 (Nyquist frequency) f RF signal recovery 1. Upsample to original sample rate (interpolation) 2. Remodulate by mixing frequency f c -2f c Low-pass filter f s /2 (LPF) B/2 IQ demodulation adapted from [Kirkhorn 1999] f
IQ (in-phase/quadrature) data: interpretation x IQ = LPF{exp(-ω c t) x RF }= LPF{cos(ω c t) x RF - jsin(ω c t) x RF }= x I + jx Q Express RF signal as sum of slowly varying signal i(t) modulating in-phase cosine oscillation and slowly varying q(t) modulating quadrature sinusoid x RF = i(t)cos(ω c t) + q(t)sin(ω c t) where i(t), q(t) are slowly varying IQ signal is then x IQ = 0.5 LPF{i(t)(1+cos(2ω c t)-jsin(2ω c t)) + q(t)(sin(2ω c t)-j-jcos(2ω c t))} Low-pass filter removes ±2f c Re{x IQ } contains in-phase signal Im{x IQ } contains quadrature signal x IQ gives envelope = 0.5 i(t) -0.5 jq(t)
IQ example: cosinusoid (in-phase) around t=0 µs, sinusoid (quadrature) around t=2 µs (both 3 cycles at 5 MHz) 1 signal 0.1 power spectrum RF signal 0 0.05 demodulated signal IQ signal (after LPF) Note how IQ signal can be sampled at much lower rate! -1-1 0 1 2 3 1 0-1 -1 0 1 2 3 1 0.5 0 real component real component I imaginary component imaginary component Q -0.5-1 0 1 2 3 time (µs) 0.05 0-50 -40-30-20-10 0 10 20 30 40 50 0.1 0.05 0-50 -40-30-20-10 0 10 20 30 40 50 0.1 0-10 0 10 frequency (MHz)
Envelope detection Take magnitude of x IQ OR Hilbert transform H{.} of reconstructed x RF : 90º phase shift Analytic function of r(t): x RF (t) + j H{x RF (t)} In Matlab: abs(hilbert(r(t))) (hilbert(.) actually generates analytic function!) In your own time: consider similarities between IQ and Hilbert transforms 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0-0.2-0.4-0.6-0.8 1 original signal -1 Hilbert transform (90 delay) envelope 5 10 15 20 19
Scan conversion Log compression for perception of large (~60 db) dynamic range Threshold to reject noise 0 0 0 10 10 10 20 20 20 30 30 30 40 40 40 50 50 50 60 60 60 70 70 70 80 80 80-10 0 10-10 0 10-10 0 10 im log(im) log(max(im,value)) 20
References Medical diagnostic systems B-mode imaging [Brunner 2002] Ultrasound system considerations and their impact on front-end components [Kirkhorn 1999] Introduction to IQ-demodulation of RF data. http://folk.ntnu.no/htorp/undervisning/ttk10/iqdemodulation.pdf [Szabo 2004] Diagnostic ultrasound imaging: Inside out [Tortoli et al. 2009] ULA-OP: an advanced open platform for ultrasound research www.itk.ppke.hu [Wilson et al. 2006] The Ultrasonix 500RP: a commercial ultrasound research interface 2011.11.28.. TÁMOP 4.1.2-08/2/A/KMR-2009-0006 21