CHAPTER 12
Digital 3D/4D Ultrasound Imaging Array
Stergios Stergiopoulos
DRDC Toronto, Toronto, Ontario
12.1 BACKGROUND
The fully digital three-dimensional (3D)/(4D: 3D + time) ultrasound system technology of this chapter consists of an advanced beamforming structure that allows the implementation of adaptive and synthetic aperture signal processing techniques in ultrasound systems deploying multidimensional arrays of sensors. The aim with this fully digital ultrasound beamformer is to address the fundamental image resolution problems of current ultrasound systems and to provide suggestions for its implementation into existing 2D and/or 3D ultrasound systems as well as develop a complete stand-alone 3D ultrasound solution. This development has received grant support from the Defence R&D Canada (DRDC) and from the European Commission IST Program (i.e., ADUMS project: EC-IST-2001-34088).
To fully exploit the advantages of the present fully digital adaptive ultrasound technology, however, its implementation in a commercial ultrasound system requires that the system has a fully digital design configuration consisting of analog-to-digital converters (A/DC) and digital-to-analog convertes (D/AC) peripherals that have the capability to fully digitize the ultrasound probe time series, to optimally shape the transmitted ultrasound pulses through a D/A peripheral and to integrate linear and/or ...
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