TY - JOUR
T1 - Front-End Architecture Design for Low-Complexity 3-D Ultrasound Imaging Based on Synthetic Aperture Sequential Beamforming
AU - Zhou, Jian
AU - Mandal, Sumit K.
AU - West, Brendan L.
AU - Wei, Siyuan
AU - Ogras, Umit Y.
AU - Kripfgans, Oliver D.
AU - Fowlkes, J. Brian
AU - Wenisch, Thomas F.
AU - Chakrabarti, Chaitali
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 1993-2012 IEEE.
PY - 2021/2
Y1 - 2021/2
N2 - The 3-D ultrasound imaging provides distinct advantages over its 2-D counterpart leading to a more accurate analysis of tumors and cysts. However, the front end of a 3-D system must receive and process data at prodigious rates, making it impractical for power-constrained portable systems. Synthetic aperture sequential beamforming (SASB) is an ultrasound beamforming technique that splits the computation into two stages, such that the computation in Stage 1 can be completed in the power-constrained front end while the remaining computation can be done elsewhere. In this article, we present several algorithmic and architectural techniques to enable efficient computation of Stage 1 processing without compromising imaging quality. Specifically, we present algorithmic techniques that reduce the computational complexity in Stage 1 by $17\times $ through a systematic reduction in the number of apodization coefficients. We propose a 3-D die stacked architecture where the signals received by 961 active transducers are digitized, routed by a network-on-chip, and processed in parallel. This architecture does not require the explicit storage of incoming data samples. We synthesize the architecture using TSMC 28-nm technology node. The front-end power consumption is around 1.5 W, making it suitable for portable applications.
AB - The 3-D ultrasound imaging provides distinct advantages over its 2-D counterpart leading to a more accurate analysis of tumors and cysts. However, the front end of a 3-D system must receive and process data at prodigious rates, making it impractical for power-constrained portable systems. Synthetic aperture sequential beamforming (SASB) is an ultrasound beamforming technique that splits the computation into two stages, such that the computation in Stage 1 can be completed in the power-constrained front end while the remaining computation can be done elsewhere. In this article, we present several algorithmic and architectural techniques to enable efficient computation of Stage 1 processing without compromising imaging quality. Specifically, we present algorithmic techniques that reduce the computational complexity in Stage 1 by $17\times $ through a systematic reduction in the number of apodization coefficients. We propose a 3-D die stacked architecture where the signals received by 961 active transducers are digitized, routed by a network-on-chip, and processed in parallel. This architecture does not require the explicit storage of incoming data samples. We synthesize the architecture using TSMC 28-nm technology node. The front-end power consumption is around 1.5 W, making it suitable for portable applications.
KW - 3-D ultrasound imaging
KW - array processing
KW - portable medical device
KW - synthetic aperture sequential beamforming (SASB)
KW - ultrasound beamforming
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U2 - 10.1109/TVLSI.2020.3035698
DO - 10.1109/TVLSI.2020.3035698
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85098772085
SN - 1063-8210
VL - 29
SP - 333
EP - 346
JO - IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems
JF - IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems
IS - 2
M1 - 9257452
ER -