An efficient 3D beamformer implementation for real-time 4D ultrasound systems deploying planar array probes

The paper describes the components of a real-time 4D ultrasound system, including the transmission functionality, the efficient 3D beamforming implementation, and its mapping to a multi-computer platform. The 3D beamforming algorithm consists of a more efficient implementation with respect to the traditional approach and is based on the decomposition of the 3D beamforming process for a regular two-dimensional array into two steps of simpler 2D beamforming (Stergiopoulos, S. and Dhanantwari, A.C., 2002; Tawfik, A. et al., 1997; Dhanantwari et al., 2003; Stergiopoulos; 2000). The proposed decomposition of the 3D beamforming allows for the parallelization of the required processing. System results are presented, where the acquisitions have been performed on a standard ultrasound phantom, and the reconstructed volumes are shown. The present work is part of the European Commission project ADUMS (IST-2001-34088) aimed at developing a fully digital 4D ultrasound system for medical imaging applications.