Design of a 128-channel FPGA-based ultrasound imaging beamformer for research activities

Medical ultrasound scanners are amongst the most sophisticated signal processing machines in use today. To support the complex analog and digital functions, multiple customized application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) are typically used for the front-end and back-end processing, with limited programmability. Even with the recent advances in electronic technology, most of these systems do not provide the ultrasound researchers to have access to raw ultrasound radio-frequency (RF) data and several other important transmission and reception functions, which are available only to systems engineers. In this paper, we present the design and progresses of a 128-channel programmable, reconfigurable and modular FPGA-based ultrasound beamformer system specifically designed for medical imaging research. The transmitter beamformer can excite simultaneously 128-channel with arbitrary waveform, with individual enable control, amplitude apodization, phase angle and time delay for dynamic focusing on transmission. The receiver beamformer can handle simultaneous 128-channels acquisition with programmable sampling rate up to 50 MHz and 12-bit resolution. The proposed platform allows connection to linear and convex transducers array, up to 256 elements, or phased array transducers, up to 128 elements, and center frequency between 500 kHz and 20 MHz.